Saw this in a book [Churchill’s Deception, Louis Kilzer, 1994]. Either Hitler was dissembling, which of course he never did, or he really felt similar to the way normal people do when they read about people clamoring for war:
On October 6 [1939], Hitler slowly walked to the podium at the Kroll Opera House to address the Reichstag. For a time the hushed audience saw a side of Hitler they never knew existed, if in fact it ever did. …
Of the European conflict, Hitler said simply: “It would be more sensible to tackle the solution before millions of men are first uselessly sent to their death . . . Long-range guns will then be set up, and from both sides destruction will strike deeper and deeper, and whatever cannot be reached by the long-distance guns will be destroyed from the air. And that will be very interesting for certain international journalists, and very profitable for the aeroplane, arms, and munition manufacturers, etc., but appalling for the victims.”
Sounds a little like today.
Also sounding a little like today, in 1940, Ulrich von Hassell, a German ambassador (who, incidentally, was in on a conspiracy to overthrow Hitler), sounds Nostradamus-like in his predictions:
Europe had changed in ways that were fundamental. It would never again be as it was. … There would come, Hassell prophesied, the “ascendency of Hitler’s brand of socialism, the destruction of the upper class, the transformation of the churches into meaningless sects. … We shall get a godless nature, a dehumanized, cultureless Germany, and perhaps a Europe, conscienceless and brutal.”
That Hitler was a bad dude.
Messerschmitthead.
Demkopf.
Note the date. Hitler was trying to talk his way out of a wider war, having already divided Poland with Stalin. I have heard old radio programs of diplomacy being tried to end the war, maybe even a month into it. It had worked with Austria and Czechoslovakia, but didn’t with Poland.
The premise of the book I mentioned is just that.
Hitler was trying to say to England “Hey, forget your pledge of waging war on behalf of a country that now no longer exists (Poland), and let’s you and us go finish off Russia!”
He couldn’t understand why the Brits didn’t share that logic.
(Addendum: The “Deception” mentioned in the title “Churchill’s Deception” refers to Churchill convincing Hitler that there was a large Peace movement in the highest reaches of England’s government, ready, willing, and able to sign a peace-at-any-price agreement with Hitler so that he wouldn’t have to fight a two-front war, with the idea being that both countries could then fight the Soviets together. It was all an illusion, but it caused Hitler to hesitate to completely obliterate the British at Dunkirk; and makes sense of Rudolf Hess’s flight to England a year and a half after the invasion of Poland.)
Ah. Thanks.