From The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (William L. Shirer, 1960, 2011) pp471-2
HITLER’S REPLY TO ROOSEVELT
The replies were potent ammunition for Hitler, and he made masterly use of them as he swung into his speech to the Reichstag on the pleasant spring day of April 28, 1939. It was, I believe, the longest major public speech he ever made, taking more than two hours to deliver. In many ways, especially in the power of its appeal to Germans and to the friends of Nazi Germany abroad, it was probably the most brilliant oration he ever gave, certainly the greatest this writer ever heard from him. For sheer eloquence, craftiness, irony, sarcasm and hypocrisy, it reached a new level that he was never to approach again. And though prepared for German ears, it was broadcast not only on all German radio stations but on hundreds of others throughout the world; in the United States it was carried by the major networks. Never before or afterward was there such a world-wide audience as he had that day.*
The speech began, after the usual introductory dissertation on the iniquities of Versailles and the many injustices and long suffering heaped upon the German people by it, with an answer first to Great Britain and Poland which shook an uneasy Europe.
After declaring his feeling of admiration and friendship for England and then attacking it for its distrust of him and its new “policy of encirclement” of Germany, he denounced the Anglo-German Naval Treaty of 1935. “The basis for it,” he said, “has been removed.”
Likewise with Poland. He made known his proposal to Poland concerning Danzig and the Corridor (which had been kept secret), called it “the greatest imaginable concession in the interests of European peace” and informed the Reichstag that the Polish government had rejected this “one and only offer.”
I have regretted this incomprehensible attitude of the Polish Government . The worst is that now Poland, like Czechoslovakia a year ago, believes, Under pressure of a lying international campaign, that it must call up troops‘ although Germany has not called up a single man and had not thought of proceeding in any way against Poland. This is in itself very regrettable, and posterity will one day decide whether it was really right to refuse this suggestion, made this once by me . . . a truly unique compromise …
Reports that Germany intended to attack Poland, Hitler went on, were “mere inventions of the international press.” (Not one of the tens of millions of persons listening could know that only three weeks before he had given written orders to his armed forces to prepare for the destruction of Poland by September 1, “at the latest”) The inventions of the press, he continued, had led Poland to make its agreement with Great Britain which, “under certain circumstances, would compel Poland to take military action against Germany.” Therefore, Poland had broken the Polish-German nonaggression pact! “Therefore, I look upon the agreement . . , as having been unilaterally infringed by Poland and thereby no longer in existence.”
Having himself unilaterally torn up two formal treaties, Hitler then told the Reichstag that he was willing to negotiate replacements for them! “I can but welcome such an idea,” he exclaimed. “No one would be happier than I at the prospect.” This was an old trick he had pulled often before when he had broken a treaty, as we have seen, but though he probably did not know it, it would no longer work.
Hitler next turned to President Roosevelt, and here the German dictator reached the summit of his oratory. To a normal ear, to be sure, it reeked with hypocrisy and deception. But to the hand-picked members of the Reichstag, and to millions of Germans, its masterly sarcasm and irony were a delight. The paunchy deputies rocked with raucous laughter as the Fuehrer uttered with increasing effect his seemingly endless ridicule of the American President. One by one he took up the points of Roosevelt’s telegram, paused, almost smiled, and then, like a schoolmaster, uttered in a low voice one word, “Answer” – and gave it. (This writer can still, in his mind, see Hitler pausing time after time to say quietly, “Antwort,” while above the rostrum in the President’s chair Goering tried ineffectually to stifle a snicker and the members of the Reichstag prepared, as soon as the Antwort was given, to roar and laugh.)
*On the day of the speech Weizsaecker wired Hans Thomsen, German chargé in Washington, instructing him to give the Fuehrer’s address the widest possible publicity n the United States and assuring him that extra funds would be provided for the purpose. On May 1 Thomsen replied, “Interest in speech surpasses anything so far known. l have therefore directed that the English text printed here is to be sent . . to tens of thousands of addressees of all classes and callings, in accordance with the agreed plan. Claim for costs to follow.”
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