Wrapping up William Shirer's recounting from the voluminous notes he took of his news coverage from 1930 to 1940, we take up with Nazi Germany's impending invasion of Poland...Shirer's account is unique as he was present to witness the unfolding drama of the thirties in Europe, and his telling benefits not only from his writing perspective after the war's end, but his own diary entries, some of which surprised even him as he re-read them for research...He also benefited from having access to captured German files, since the Nazis were meticulous in their detailed record-keeping...
Shirer tells us that "a counterattack" was how the German armed forces high command, the OKW, characterized its incursion across the Polish border, firing the opening shots which brought yet another war to fruition in Europe...A day early for keeping to his "Saturday surprise" schedule, at this point it no longer mattered to Hitler as the world engaged itself once more in armed conflict...
Der Fuehrer was no longer concerned with worry over whether Britain and France would uphold their treaty obligations to Poland, as he was sure his recent contract with Joe Stalin's Soviet empire would convince the western allies to continue their path of appeasement of Germany's ever expanding global greed...At first it appeared the world had swallowed his thinly concocted tale of Polish provocation with Nazi headlines blaring stories of Polish atrocities committed against the peaceful German population...
Despite revisionist attempts to alter history from latter-day Nazi apologists, the evidence is clear that Adolf Hitler and his Nazi toadies staged an act of deception in pre-staging what they believed the gullible world would see as Polish aggression...Modern-day reinterpreters of history would have us believe that the Polish horse cavalry provoked Heinz Guderian's panzer divisions into the defensive act of leaving the area between Germany's eastern border and the Warsaw suburbs strewn with the carcasses of men and horseflesh, but common sense tells another story...
The radio station attack was not the only scripted Nazi event of the day, but received the most press coverage...Shirer also wrote of the slaying of the German soldiers who participated in the radio station attack, quoting the Nuremberg testimony of General Erwin von Lahousen who said, "All of them eventually were put out of the way"...
It is known that Hitler was a great fan of Hollywood movies, and often had them screened for his private viewing...It may be possible that among his entertainment selections, he saw Universal's 1932 horror classic, "The Mummy," in which the slaves who entombed the mummy were killed, followed by the murder of the soldiers who killed the slaves, all to prevent the truth from being known publicly...
Then, as if in thinking like the ancient Pharaohs of Egypt, Hitler (or more likely the more occult-minded Himmler) may have had the soldiers who staged the Gleiwitz massacre murdered to ensure their silence...SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Alfred Naujocks who commanded the radio station attack, described by Shirer as an "intellectual thug," escaped murder, but not the disfavor of his Nazi bosses...He later testified against them at Nuremberg after defecting to the western allies in 1944...
In the closing months of 1939, Shirer was invited to the huge German Kriegsmarine base at Kiel, where he was able to confirm some rumors, and dispel other misconceptions concerning Reich seapower...His assigned tour guide proudly and unknowingly gave away military secrets much to the consternation of the Abwehr adjutant who accompanied the tour...
One of these concerned the status of the German light cruiser, Leipzig, which was falsely reported by the British press as torpedoed and sunk...Shirer also gained valuable intel concerning the current location and status of several Kriegsmarine battlewagons including the Scharnhorst, the Gneisenau, the pocket battleship Deutschland and the incomplete Bismarck...
He remarked in his text that he could have broadcast this information on CBS radio, but only at the cost of his own decapitation...He further thought that by the time the British had mounted an air raid to destroy these ships, they would have long ago put to sea...Prudently, he kept his head...
Although Shirer wrote an entire book detailing the events concerning the fall of France, from its causes to its aftermath, he devoted a good portion of this book to it also...The "fall" of France can be looked at several ways as those who think in terms of its beauty, grace and contributions to the arts may think of it as a fall from lofty heights, while others of us who have witnessed first hand the arrogance and ingratitude of its leadership may see it as a short plunge considering they were already on their knees begging for deliverance for the most part...But that is a viewpoint from this observer, and while it is shared by many, Shirer presented hard evidence and the witness of his own eyes and ears in his reports...
From their perspective of seeing WWI end in victory for the side with which they happened to have been associated, the French leadership commissioned their military planners to prepare for replaying the same war...Their construction of the Maginot Line would certainly have presented a formidable obstacle to a German army attacking in the same manner as they did in WWI...Unfortunately for them, Hitler and his horde decided to replay the war from a different angle and speed...
Riding the same streak of lucky choices which led to his delusion of military genius, the mad dictator considered strategy options with his rubber-stamp Offizerkorps, the OKW...A junior member of the general staff, Erich von Manstein, caught his attention with his aggressive plan to attack with armor through the Ardennes Forest...Hitler, having no training in military strategy or tactics, but being a believer in his own hunches, liked it immediately for its unconventional direction of surprise...His embrace of the plan was probably exacerbated by the Mechelen Incident, when some of the plans for Fall Gelb were compromised...
A personal meeting with Manstein left Der Fuehrer with a distrust of Manstein, but he thought the plan itself brilliant for its bold sichelschnitt through the Ardennes...The plan's execution led to a hasty capitulation by the defeatist-led French forces, leaving their own divisions, plus the BEF to fend for themselves against the attacking German forces at Dunkirk...The only saving grace for the Allies was that the power-hungry, but drug-addled Hermann Goring convinced Hitler to allow his Luftwaffe to take the glory of final victory away from the Heer...
Instinctively throwing up their hands in surrender, the French meekly accepted Hitler's terms in a humiliating ceremony at the exact spot of Germany's surrender 22 years earlier in the same railway car...Shirer, who was there by German invitation, scored a major scoop for CBS radio by circumventing Hitler's news blackout through, unknowing to him, the cooperation of German army radio engineers who wanted the news made public immediately before Hitler could grab personal credit...
Describing the terms of the French submission in his book, Shirer said of the armistice that Frenchmen only wanted the killing to stop; the killing of Frenchmen that is...The roundup and killing of German refugees who had fled to France for safety went on unabated, despite a half-hearted protest by the French before signing the surrender document...Many political opponents of Nazism including former Social Democrats, Rudolph Breitscheid and Rudolf Hilferding were taken to their places of death from France by the Gestapo following the armistice...
The cowardly defeatists who took the helm of what was laughingly termed as "unoccupied France" under the direction of Marshal Petain and Pierre Laval, and taking their orders from Berlin, established the government of Vichy France which immediately became the ally and partner of Nazi Germany...The complacent, but temporarily alive, French population averted their eyes to the atrocious trashing of their own democracy...Even their revered poets and novelists Claudel, Mauriac and Gide accepted and embraced defeatism as an alternative to the continuation of battle against Nazism...
These same enthusiastic wavers of the white flag were, of course, the first to cheer as General Charles DeGaulle re-entered Paris in the reassuring knowledge that the way had been made safe for him with the sacrificed blood of many American and British lives...The insufferable, arrogant DeGaulle, of whom very few French even knew in 1940, got his airtime as the only French voice of resistance with his "Free French" movement, safely ensconced as he was on the British Isles...
The English, and later the Americans, especially Churchill, Roosevelt and General Eisenhower, thought him a self-serving, pompous promoter only interested in assuming credit for any victories, and preparing a way for his political career...After the smoke of battle finally cleared, he stepped forward on French soil as the symbol of French triumph over evil, carefully taking those steps over the bodies of those who did the actual fighting so as not to soil his polished boots...
Protecting DeGaulle while he was thumbing his nose and rattling his rubber sword at the Nazis was a 26 mile wide stretch of ocean which the Germans seemed to have forgotten in their master strategy planning sessions...Busily gobbling up territory and eliminating unwanted populations on the European continent, Hitler and the OKW came up against an unremembered wall as they stared across the English Channel at the white cliffs of Dover...As the general staff contemplated the upcoming, and mandatory by Hitler's decree, war against the British Empire, it suddenly dawned on them that they had no plans whatsoever in place for an invasion...
Panic ensued at the OKW after Hitler announced in July 1940 that the invasion must begin August 15...Thus began the afterthought of planning which became Operation Sea Lion...It was almost comical reading Shirer's description of the "who-tells-the fuehrer" buck being passed from one general staff officer to another, until Grand Admiral Erich Raeder stepped up to the plate and told Hitler the truth: that the earliest he could have the Kriegsmarine ready for invasion duty was May of the following year...
Possibly anticipating Hitler's tantrum at not being able to land German forces on English soil immediately, Raeder then detailed a list of minimum requirements for an invasion on September 15 as ordered...The C in C of the German Navy reported to his Fuehrer that his command could undertake the invasion if, and only if, the weather in the channel was favorable; if the necessary barges, landing craft and tugs could be secured; if the invasion force and all necessary supplies could be gathered at the stepping off points; and the biggest if of all, if the Luftwaffe could gain air superiority over the RAF to prevent the slaughter and sinking of the entire German Navy and the invasion force...
The Admiral told Hitler he could procure the needed barges and tugs, but it would strip the inland waterways of craft needed to sustain the Reich's wartime economy, and he could not guarantee their return...Reich Marshal Goring immediately felt the monkey being placed on his back, and was forced to promise his Fuehrer that his Luftwaffe could clear the channel airways in the allotted time...
This set the stage for the Battle of Britain, which the fat, lazy Goring elected to direct from the comfort of his Carinhall estate while curating his plundered art collection...During this time he committed two blunders which doomed the German air effort...First he discounted the importance of the British radar installations, and called off attacks on them as "ineffective"...
Second, at a time when RAF Fighter Command was struggling to keep enough Spitfires and Hurricanes in the air to battle the incoming Luftwaffe attacks, Goring switched strategies from the bombing of airfields to attacks on British population centers...This gave the RAF time to regroup and mount successful defenses against the incoming offense...Had Hitler listened to those who had earlier called for Goring's replacement, the outcome might have been different...
In the same way that the Empire of Japan sealed its own fate by initiating a war without first securing its own supply lines, the Germans were doomed before they fired the first round by not having a strategic plan in place for all foreseeable outcomes...By this point, Shirer could feel a noose tightening around his own neck as he was tipped by an informant that the Gestapo was building an espionage case against him...He was still being invited to tour battle areas, but he declined to present what he saw in the way the Nazi regime wanted it reported, and decided the time was right to leave Germany...
After finding a suitable replacement for broadcast duties in Berlin, Shirer began packing his bags for his getaway, and wondering how to get his diaries and notes out with him for use as research later...He knew if the Gestapo caught a peek at them, he would never leave Germany with his head attached as they could certainly be used in evidence supporting espionage charges by the Nazis...But luck and ingenuity were with him as he devised a clever, but risky plan to use the Gestapo itself as the means of transporting his files in safety...I'll leave that delightful surprise to his readers to discover for themselves...
After an evasive trip home to America, the book's final pages jump to Shirer's return to Europe for his coverage of the warcrimes trials at Nuremberg, and his shock at seeing what the ensuing five years had done to the accused Nazis in the meantime...His thumbnail portraits of the judicial and prosecutorial teams offered insight to the trials I had not previously seen...
Protecting DeGaulle while he was thumbing his nose and rattling his rubber sword at the Nazis was a 26 mile wide stretch of ocean which the Germans seemed to have forgotten in their master strategy planning sessions...Busily gobbling up territory and eliminating unwanted populations on the European continent, Hitler and the OKW came up against an unremembered wall as they stared across the English Channel at the white cliffs of Dover...As the general staff contemplated the upcoming, and mandatory by Hitler's decree, war against the British Empire, it suddenly dawned on them that they had no plans whatsoever in place for an invasion...
Panic ensued at the OKW after Hitler announced in July 1940 that the invasion must begin August 15...Thus began the afterthought of planning which became Operation Sea Lion...It was almost comical reading Shirer's description of the "who-tells-the fuehrer" buck being passed from one general staff officer to another, until Grand Admiral Erich Raeder stepped up to the plate and told Hitler the truth: that the earliest he could have the Kriegsmarine ready for invasion duty was May of the following year...
Possibly anticipating Hitler's tantrum at not being able to land German forces on English soil immediately, Raeder then detailed a list of minimum requirements for an invasion on September 15 as ordered...The C in C of the German Navy reported to his Fuehrer that his command could undertake the invasion if, and only if, the weather in the channel was favorable; if the necessary barges, landing craft and tugs could be secured; if the invasion force and all necessary supplies could be gathered at the stepping off points; and the biggest if of all, if the Luftwaffe could gain air superiority over the RAF to prevent the slaughter and sinking of the entire German Navy and the invasion force...
The Admiral told Hitler he could procure the needed barges and tugs, but it would strip the inland waterways of craft needed to sustain the Reich's wartime economy, and he could not guarantee their return...Reich Marshal Goring immediately felt the monkey being placed on his back, and was forced to promise his Fuehrer that his Luftwaffe could clear the channel airways in the allotted time...
This set the stage for the Battle of Britain, which the fat, lazy Goring elected to direct from the comfort of his Carinhall estate while curating his plundered art collection...During this time he committed two blunders which doomed the German air effort...First he discounted the importance of the British radar installations, and called off attacks on them as "ineffective"...
Second, at a time when RAF Fighter Command was struggling to keep enough Spitfires and Hurricanes in the air to battle the incoming Luftwaffe attacks, Goring switched strategies from the bombing of airfields to attacks on British population centers...This gave the RAF time to regroup and mount successful defenses against the incoming offense...Had Hitler listened to those who had earlier called for Goring's replacement, the outcome might have been different...
In the same way that the Empire of Japan sealed its own fate by initiating a war without first securing its own supply lines, the Germans were doomed before they fired the first round by not having a strategic plan in place for all foreseeable outcomes...By this point, Shirer could feel a noose tightening around his own neck as he was tipped by an informant that the Gestapo was building an espionage case against him...He was still being invited to tour battle areas, but he declined to present what he saw in the way the Nazi regime wanted it reported, and decided the time was right to leave Germany...
After finding a suitable replacement for broadcast duties in Berlin, Shirer began packing his bags for his getaway, and wondering how to get his diaries and notes out with him for use as research later...He knew if the Gestapo caught a peek at them, he would never leave Germany with his head attached as they could certainly be used in evidence supporting espionage charges by the Nazis...But luck and ingenuity were with him as he devised a clever, but risky plan to use the Gestapo itself as the means of transporting his files in safety...I'll leave that delightful surprise to his readers to discover for themselves...
After an evasive trip home to America, the book's final pages jump to Shirer's return to Europe for his coverage of the warcrimes trials at Nuremberg, and his shock at seeing what the ensuing five years had done to the accused Nazis in the meantime...His thumbnail portraits of the judicial and prosecutorial teams offered insight to the trials I had not previously seen...
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