From MSN: Friends, foes, mark WWII’s start in Poland<\/a><\/p>\n Hitler’s speech on Sept. 1, 1939, from Berlin:<\/p>\n To the defense forces:<\/p>\n The Polish nation refused my efforts for a peaceful regulation of neighborly relations; instead it has appealed to weapons.<\/p>\n Germans in Poland are persecuted with a bloody terror and are driven from their homes. The series of border violations, which are unbearable to a great power, prove that the Poles no longer are willing to respect the German frontier. In order to put an end to this frantic activity no other means is left to me now than to meet force with force.<\/p>\n German defense forces will carry on the battle for the honor of the living rights of the re- awakened German people with firm determination.<\/p>\n I expect every German soldier, in view of the great tradition of eternal German soldiery, to do his duty until the end.<\/p>\n Remember always in all situations you are the representatives of National Socialist Greater Germany!<\/p>\n Long live our people and our Reich!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Excerpt from Viktor Klemperer’s stunning diary I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941<\/a> September 3, Sunday afternoon<\/strong><\/p>\n This torture of one’s nerves ever more unbearable. On Friday morning blackout ordered until further notice. We sit in the tiny cellar, the terrible damp closeness, the constant sweating and shivering, the smell of mold, the food shortage, makes everything even more miserable. I try to save butter and meat for Eva and Muschel, to make do myself as far as possible with still unrationed bread and fish. This in itself would all be trivial, but it is all only by the way. What will happen? From hour to hour we tell ourselves, now is the moment when everything is decided, whether Hitler is all-powerful, whether his rule will last indefinitely, or whether it falls now, now<\/i>.<\/p>\n On Friday morning, September 1, the young butcher’s lad came and told us: There had been a radio announcement, we already held Danzig and the Corridor, the war with Poland was under way, England and France remained neutral. I said to Eva, then a morphine injection or something similar was the best thing for us, our life was over. But then we said to one another, that<\/i> could not possibly be the way things were, the boy had often reported absurd things (he was a perfect example of the way in which people take in news reports). A little later we heard Hitler’s agitated voice, then the usual roaring, but could not make anything out. We said to ourselves, if the report were even only half true they must already be putting out the flags. Then down in town the dispatch of the outbreak of war. I asked several people whether English neutrality had already been declared. Only an intelligent salesgirl in a cigar shop on Chemnitzer Platz said: No – that would really be a joke! At the baker’s, at Vogel’s, they all said, as good as declared, all over in a few days! A young man in front of the newspaper display: The English are cowards, they won’t do anything. Ad thus with variations the general mood, vox populi (butter seller, newspaper man, bill collector of the gas company etc. etc.) In the afternoon read the Fuhrer’s speech. It seemed to me pessimistic as far as the external and the interal position were considered. Also all the regulations pointed and still point to more than a mere punitive expedition against Poland. And now this is the third day like this, it feels as if it has been three years: the waiting, the despairing, hoping, weighing up, not knowing. The newspaper yesterday, Saturday, vague and in fact anticipating a general outbreak of war: England, the attacker – English mobilization, French mobilization, they will bleed to death! etc., etc. But still no declaration of war on their side. Is it coming or will they fail to resist and merely demonstrate weakness?<\/p>\n The military bulletin is also unclear. Talks of successes everywhere, reports no serious opposition anywhere and yet also shows that German troops have nowhere advanced far beyond the frontiers. How does it all fit together? All in all: Reports and measures taken are serious, popular opinion absolutely certain of victory, ten thousand times more arrogant than in ’14. The consequence will either be an overwhelming, almost unchallenged victory, and England and France are castrated minor states, or a catastrophe ten thousand times worse than ’18. And the two of us right in the middle, helpless and probably lost in either case … And yet we force ourselves, and sometimes it even succeeds for a couple of hours, to go on with our everyday life: reading aloud, eating (as best we can), writing, garden. But as I lie down to sleep I think: Will they come for me tonight? Will I be shot, will I be put in a concentration camp?<\/p>\n Waiting in peaceful Dolzschen, cut off from the world, is particularly bad. One listens to every sound, watches every face, pays attention to everything. One learns nothing. One waits for the newspaper and can make nothing of it. At the moment I do tend to think that there will be war with the great powers.<\/p>\n At the butcher an old dear puts her hand on my shoulder and says in a voice full of tears: He<\/i> has said that he will put on a soldier’s coat again and be a soldier himself, and if he falls, then Goering … A young lady brings me my ration card, looks at me with a friendly expression: Do you still remember me? I studied under you, I’ve married into the family here. — An old gentleman, very friendly, brings the blackout order: Terrible, that it’s war again – but yet one is so patriotic, when I saw a battery leaving yesterday, I wanted more than anything to go with them! No one is outraged by the Russian alliance, people think it is brilliant or an excellent joke – Vogel’s optimism (yesterday: We’ve almost finished off the Poles, the others won’t stir themselves!) is to our benefit in coffee, sausage, tea, soap etc. — Is this the general mood in Germany? Is it founded on facts or on hubris?<\/p>\n The Jewish Community in Dresden inquires whether I want to join it, since it represents the National Association of Jews locally; the Confessing Christians inquire whether I shall remain with them. I replied to the Gruber people that I was and will remain Protestant, I would not reply to the Jewish Community at all.<\/p>\n Note how on September 1 the Fuhrer declared lasting friendship with Russia in two words. Is there really no one in Germany who does not feel a pang of conscience? Once more: Machiavelli was mistaken; there is a line beyond which the separation of morality and politics is unpolitical and has to be paid for. Sooner or later. But can we<\/i> wait until later?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Excerpt from William Shirer’s Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941<\/a> BERLIN, AUGUST 31 three thirty a.m.<\/strong><\/p>\n Tonight the great armies, navies, and air forces are all mobilized. Each country is shut off from the other. We have not been able today to get through to Paris or London, or of course to Warsaw, though I did talk to Tess in Geneva. At that, no precipitate action is expected tonight. Berlin is quite normal in appearance this evening. There has been no evacuation of women and children, not even any sandbagging of the windows. We’ll have to wait through still another night, it appears, before we know. And so to bed, almost at dawn.<\/p>\n BERLIN, September 1<\/strong><\/p>\n At six a.m. Sigrid Schultz – bless her heart – phoned. She said: “it’s happened.” I was very sleepy – my body and mind numbed, paralysed. I mumbled: “Thanks, Sigrid,” and tumbled out of bed. The war is on!<\/p>\n later<\/strong> Tomorrow Britain and France probably will come in and you have your second World War. The British and French tonight sent an ultimatum to Hitler to withdraw his troops from Poland or their ambassadors will ask for their passports. Presumably they will get their passports.<\/p>\n Later. Two thirty a.m.<\/i> – Almost through our first blackout. The city is completely darkened. It takes a little getting used to. You grope around in the pitch-black streets and pretty soon your eyes get used to it. You can make out the whitewashed curbstones. We had our first air-raid alarm at seven p.m. I was at the radio just beginning my script for a broadcast at eight fifteen. The lights went out, and all the German employees grabbed their gas-masks and, not a little frightened, rushed for the shelter. No one offered me a mask, but the wardens insisted that I go to the cellar. In the darkness and confusion I escaped outside and went down to the studios, where I found a small room in which a candle was burning on a table. There I scribbled out my notes. No planes came over. But with the English and French in, it may be different tomorrow. I shall then be in the by no means pleasant predicament of hoping they bomb the hell out of this town without getting me. The ugly shrill of the sirens, the rushing to a cellar with your gas-mask (if you have one), the utter darkness of the night – how will human nerves stand for that long?<\/p>\n One curious thing about Berlin on this first night of the war: the cafes, restaurants, and beer-halls were packed. The people just a bit apprehensive after the air-raid, I felt. Finished broadcasting at one thirty a.m., stumbled a half-mile down the Kaiserdamm in the dark, and finally found a taxi. But another pedestrian appeared out of the dark and jumped in first. We finally shared it, he very drunk and the driver drunker, and both cursing the darkness and the war.<\/p>\n The isolation from the outside world that you feel on a night like this is increased by a new decree issued tonight prohibiting the listening to foreign broadcasts. Who’s afraid of the truth? And no wonder. Curious that not a single Polish bomber got through tonight. But will it be the same with the British and French?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n SEPTEMBER 1, 1939<\/b> I sit in one of the dives Accurate scholarship can Exiled Thucydides knew Into this neutral air Faces along the bar The windiest militant trash From the conservative dark All I have is a voice Defenseless under the night \n Germany invaded Poland, 70 years ago today. From Newsweek: Scenes from the invasion of Poland From MSN: Friends, foes, mark WWII’s start in Poland Hitler’s speech on Sept. 1, 1939, from Berlin: To the defense forces: The Polish nation refused … Continue reading ![\"70041.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/70041.jpg\")
\nHitler reviews the troops in Warsaw, early October, 1939.<\/i><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=thesheivari-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0375753788\")
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\nIt’s a “counter-attack”! At dawn this morning Hitler moved against Poland. It’s a fragrant, inexcusable, unprovoked act of aggression. But Hitler and the High Command call it a “counter-attack”. A grey morning with overhanging clouds. T he people in the street were apathetic when I drove to the Rundfunk<\/i> for my first broadcast at eight fifteen a.m. Across from the Adlon the morning shift of workers was busy on the new I.G. Farben building just as if nothing had happened. None of the men brought the extras which the newsboys were shouting. Along the east-west axis the Luftwaffe were mounting five big anti-aircraft guns to protect Hitler when he addresses the Reichstag at ten a.m. Jordan and I had to remain at the radio to handle Hitler’s speech for America. Throughout the speech, I thought as I listened, ran a curious strain, as though Hitler himself were dazed at the fix he had got himself into and felt a little desperate about it. Somehow he did not carry conviction and there was much less cheering in the Reichstag than on previous, less important occasions. Jordan must have reacted the same way. As we waited to translate the speech for America, he whispered: “Sounds like his swan song.” It really did. He sounded discouraged when he told the Reichstag that Italy would not be coming into the war because “we are unwiling to call in outside help for this struggle. We will fulfil this task by ourselves.” And yet Paragraph 3 of the Axis military alliance calls for immediate, automatic Italian support with “all its military resources on land, at sea, and in the air.” What about that? He sounded desperate when, referring to Molotov’s speech of yesterday at the Russian ratification of the Nazi-Soviet accord, he said: “I can only underline every word of Foreign Commisar Molotov’s speech.”<\/p>\n![\"Schleswig_Holstein_firing_Gdynia_13.09.1939.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/Schleswig_Holstein_firing_Gdynia_13.09.1939.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nby W.H. Auden<\/i><\/p>\n
\nOn Fifty-second Street
\nUncertain and afraid
\nAs the clever hopes expire
\nOf a low dishonest decade:
\nWaves of anger and fear
\nCirculate over the bright
\nAnd darkened lands of the earth,
\nObsessing our private lives;
\nThe unmentionable odour of death
\nOffends the September night.<\/p>\n
\nUnearth the whole offence
\nFrom Luther until now
\nThat has driven a culture mad,
\nFind what occurred at Linz,
\nWhat huge imago made
\nA psychopathic god:
\nI and the public know
\nWhat all schoolchildren learn,
\nThose to whom evil is done
\nDo evil in return.<\/p>\n
\nAll that a speech can say
\nAbout Democracy,
\nAnd what dictators do,
\nThe elderly rubbish they talk
\nTo an apathetic grave;
\nAnalysed all in his book,
\nThe enlightenment driven away,
\nThe habit-forming pain,
\nMismanagement and grief:
\nWe must suffer them all again.<\/p>\n
\nWhere blind skyscrapers use
\nTheir full height to proclaim
\nThe strength of Collective Man,
\nEach language pours its vain
\nCompetitive excuse:
\nBut who can live for long
\nIn an euphoric dream;
\nOut of the mirror they stare,
\nImperialism’s face
\nAnd the international wrong.<\/p>\n
\nCling to their average day:
\nThe lights must never go out,
\nThe music must always play,
\nAll the conventions conspire
\nTo make this fort assume
\nThe furniture of home;
\nLest we should see where we are,
\nLost in a haunted wood,
\nChildren afraid of the night
\nWho have never been happy or good.<\/p>\n
\nImportant Persons shout
\nIs not so crude as our wish:
\nWhat mad Nijinsky wrote
\nAbout Diaghilev
\nIs true of the normal heart;
\nFor the error bred in the bone
\nOf each woman and each man
\nCraves what it cannot have,
\nNot universal love
\nBut to be loved alone.<\/p>\n
\nInto the ethical life
\nThe dense commuters come,
\nRepeating their morning vow;
\n‘I will be true to the wife,
\nI’ll concentrate more on my work,’
\nAnd helpless governors wake
\nTo resume their compulsory game:
\nWho can release them now,
\nWho can reach the dead,
\nWho can speak for the dumb?<\/p>\n
\nTo undo the folded lie,
\nThe romantic lie in the brain
\nOf the sensual man-in-the-street
\nAnd the lie of Authority
\nWhose buildings grope the sky:
\nThere is no such thing as the State
\nAnd no one exists alone;
\nHunger allows no choice
\nTo the citizen or the police;
\nWe must love one another or die.<\/p>\n
\nOur world in stupor lies;
\nYet, dotted everywhere,
\nIronic points of light
\nFlash out wherever the Just
\nExchange their messages:
\nMay I, composed like them
\nOf Eros and of dust,
\nBeleaguered by the same
\nNegation and despair,
\nShow an affirming flame.<\/p>\n
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