The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Chapter 19: Sitzkrieg in the West Summary

Book Four: War: Early Victories and the Turning Point

• Nearly a week after the German invasion of Poland had begun, still nothing much had happened on the western front of the war.
• Many Germans had begun to call the Second World War the Sitzkrieg: that is, the "sit down war."
• Shirer himself took a trip up the Rhine river along the French border, and saw French troops hiding behind their fortifications and doing nothing while the Germans hauled up their weapons and supplies in plain sight.
• Later, on trial in Nuremberg, the German generals admitted being surprised that the French didn't attack.
• Shirer offers several reasons why the French hesitated to attack the Germans despite overwhelming French military superiority.
• He thinks they remembered all too the French blood shed in WWI and wanted to avoid a repeat of that horror if possible; the leadership was weak; they feared retaliation against French cities.
• Churchill had a different view. He thought the battle had already been lost when the Allies lost opportunity after opportunity to stop Hitler in his tracks as he violated the Treaty of Versailles and took steps towards aggression and war.
• The German Navy sunk 11 British ships in the first week of the war.
• Hitler eventually slowed down the naval attacks, noting the French and British hesitation in the war. He wasn't clear about what they were up to, and decided to hold off any further attacks on passenger ships until he was.

The Sinking of the Athenia

• As Shirer had noted earlier, the Athenia was torpedoed by the German Navy on the evening of September 3. However, at that time the source of the torpedo wasn't publicly known the Germans themselves weren't even sure—not at first, at least—that the Athenia had been sunk by one of their own.
• The Germans were worried about the U.S. response, since 28 Americans died during the attack.
• Shirer listened to a radio broadcast in which Goebbels accused Churchill of having sunk the Athenia.
• After the war, the Admirals admitted to destroying the records of the German orders to attack the Athenia. Hitler had personally ordered Goebbels' broadcast, and even though the admirals were appalled at the lie, they did nothing about it.
• This "doing nothing about it" stuff is getting pretty old.

Hitler Proposes Peace

• By the end of September, Hitler had begun to advocating peace between Britain, France, and Germany.
• Throughout Germany, Nazi newspapers and radio broadcasts asked why Britain and France should bother to fight now that the deed (invading Poland) was done and there was nothing left to fight about. "Germany wants nothing in the West," they proclaimed. (4.19.36)
• Uh-huh.
• The Russians joined in the clamor for peace, and together the Nazi and Soviet Foreign Ministers signed a declaration for peace, claiming that now that the Polish question was settled, they wanted no additional conflict.
• If the west didn't agree, then any further war would be their fault.
• Hitler called for a peace conference with the Western nations so that millions of lives wouldn't be sacrificed in a global war. What a humanitarian.
• Shirer says he wrote in his diary that he doubted either French or the British would believe that Hitler was interested in peace.
• France needed more guarantees, and Chamberlain flat out said he didn't believe any more of Hitler's lies. He wanted actions, not words.
• Shirer offers an analysis of Hitler's motivations at this time. Drawing on the captured Nazi documents, he shows that Hitler had of course been planning for war in the West at the same time that he was advocating peace.
• Hitler's top military brass were once again frustrated by his unwillingness to hear reason.
• Although they tried to insist that Germany couldn't win a war against France and Britain, Hitler wouldn't listen.
• Shirer explains how Hitler's plans for war in the West had developed since the summer of 1939, and he concedes that the Fuehrer's plans showed an amazing understanding of military strategy and tactics.
• After that, Shirer gives us another account of the victories and losses that were sustained and suffered by the British and German navies throughout the autumn months.
• While the German Navy seemed happy to move forward with an attack against the Western powers, the Army was less keen on the idea.

The Zossen "Conspiracy" to Overthrow Hitler

• In this short section, Shirer turns once again to the group of would-be rebels who occasionally plotted to overthrow Hitler, but who rarely managed to put their plans into action.
• There's plenty of debate, discussion, disagreement, and hesitation, but comparatively little action on their part even though an invasion of France through Belgium was imminent.
• They stayed in contact with the British, fearing that if a coup did succeed, the allies might take the opportunity to swoop in and divide up Germany.
• Their plan was to send a memorandum to Hitler expressing their belief that the planned invasion of France would be disastrous for Germany and that army morale was terrible.
• All the memorandum did was send Hitler into a rage, threatening to execute anyone who refused to fight.
• This terrified the conspirators. Nothing was done except by one general, who contacted the Netherlands and Belgium and warned them of an imminent attack.
• Hitler ended up postponing the invasions from week to week, and during that time something surprising happened.
• A bomb just missed killing Hitler, but the conspirators had nothing to do with it.

A Nazi Kidnaping and a Beerhouse Bomb

• Throughout the autumn of 1939 and the winter of 1940, Hitler delayed his invasions of the Netherlands and Belgium.
• Shirer suggests a number of possible reasons for the delays, and describes an event that distracted Hitler from pursuing his plans, but was a huge propaganda victory for him within Germany.
• The event was a failed assassination attempt which killed twelve people and injured 63 others. A bomb exploded in a beer hall where Hitler had just delivered a speech.
• Hitler and his inner circle had uncharacteristically left the beer hall right after the speech, so they weren't there when the bomb exploded.
• Hmm.
• The Nazi newspapers blamed the bomb on the British Intelligence Service, and in retaliation, two spies sneaked over the border into Holland and kidnapped two British intelligence operatives.
• The story was that the Brits hired Georg Elser, a German carpenter, to plant the bomb. Conspiracy solved.
• Shirer himself thought the idea was fishy, but he saw what they were trying to do: get support for the war by showing that the Brits had tried to murder the Fuehrer.
• Elser admitted to the assassination attempt and was sent to a concentration camp.
• He told one of the kidnapped British officers that was also interned at the camp that he was asked to make the bomb at the behest of some Nazi officials who wanted to get rid of some of Hitler's traitorous followers.
• But when he was given transportation by the Nazis to the border, he was arrested.
• Shirer's guess is that the assassination attempt was orchestrated by the Nazis themselves to increase Hitler's popularity and bolster the people's appetite for war.
• Although he concedes that many uncertainties surround the story, his analysis implies that it was as an attempt to give Hitler an air of invincibility, and to make it seem as though the Fuehrer had Providential protection.
• Right before the war ended, poor Georg Elser was killed in an Allied attack on the concentration camp.
• Not really.
• He was murdered by the Gestapo so he wouldn't tell his tale.

Hitler Talks to His Generals

• In this short section, Shirer describes another one of the many "pep talks" that Hitler gave to his top Army brass as the dates for the planned invasions of Holland and Belgium approached.
• He declared himself to be the irreplaceable leader who would restore Germany to greatness and annihilate all enemies.
• Even though many of the generals still felt an invasion of the West was an insane idea, no one said a word.
• This speech pretty much put an end to any hope of overthrowing the Fuehrer.

Nazi Terror in Poland: First Phase

• As Shirer explains, Hitler's end goal was the total destruction of Poland as an independent state, as well as the creation of a nation of "cheap slaves" who would contribute to the labor force of the Third Reich.
• Among other things, the violence and atrocity included unprecedented massacres of Jews, intelligentsia, nobility, and Christian clergy.
• Significantly, this section of TRFTR gives us Shirer's first mention of the term "final solution"—a phrase which would soon "become one of the most sinister code names bandied about by high German officials to cover one of the most hideous Nazi crimes of the war." (4.19.174)
• Hans Frank was a Nazi lawyer who became the vicious Governor General of Nazi-occupied Poland.
• Where other eminent Nazis had been ordered to oversee the "liquidation" of Jewish peoples in Poland, one of Frank's first tasks was to "liquidate" the intelligentsia.
• Frank ruthlessly went about his work.
• Even though he wasn't tasked to annihilate the Jews of Poland, he said in a speech that he could eliminate the lice and Jews in Poland in one year if given the opportunity. He was confident that the 3.5 million Polish Jews could be annihilated.
• As Shirer tells us, he was right.
• During the autumn and winter of 1939-1940, the Nazis began a brutal program of resettlement of the Polish Jews.
• He records that by February 1940, the Nazis had discovered a suitable place for a new quarantine camp: Oswiecim, Poland.
• In German, it's Auschwitz.

Friction Between the Totalitarians

• The alliance between Germany and Italy was a little shaky during the early months of the war.
• Mussolini "blew hot and cold" throughout the autumn and winter: at times he announced that he wanted Germany would be defeated; at others he spoke of joining the war on Germany's side.
• Italy felt that Germany hadn't kept its promises; Germany didn't like the fact that Italy still traded with the France and Britain.
• Although there were lots of reasons for tensions between the two nations, Shirer argues that the biggest cause of the tension was Hitler's pro-Russian policy.
• Russia's invasion of Finland caused no end of anti-German demonstrations in Italy.
• Germany's relationship with the Soviet Union was shaky by the winter of 1940.
• Back on the western front, there still hadn't been any substantial fighting on land by December 1939, but the German Navy had been keeping up a steady assault against the British at sea.
• In the first Christmas of the war, Hitler and Stalin exchanged friendly holiday greetings, and the rebel group of anti-Nazi conspirators continued to hatch new plans throughout the festive season.
• The season wasn't so festive for Germans, Shirer says he noted in his diary—few gifts, scarce food, the men away at war.
• Shirer gives us some more reasons why Hitler decided to delay the invasion of Belgium and the Netherlands until the spring.
• Hitler had two good reasons to hit pause for the moment: First, top-secret German plans for the invasion of Belgium had fallen into Belgian hands. Second, Hitler had come up with a new plan to invade two other neutral small countries.