Shortly after 4:30 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 1, 1939, Adolf Hitler ordered the attack on Poland to begin, launching the Second World War. The only people who didn’t seem to realize it were the Germans themselves.
American journalist Virginia Cowles awoke in Berlin that day to the sound of boots marching down the famous boulevard Unter den Linden outside her hotel; she watched from her balcony as storm troopers lined the avenue.
At 10 a.m., in the office of the US military attaché, she listened to Hitler’s brief speech to the Reichstag laying out all the “atrocities” committed by Poland and announcing that Germany had been “returning” Polish fire since early that morning.
She lunched with the British counselor and military attaché, who told her Britain’s declaration of war would come any time. A group of German officials eyed the Englishmen from a table nearby.
After lunch, Cowles asked the desk clerk what he thought about a world war. He looked at her, amazed.
“What do you mean, a world war? Poland is Germany’s affair. What’s it got to do with anyone else?”
He then rushed to a group of fellow Germans in the lobby, pointing at her and repeating what she’d said as the others laughed and looked at her in disbelief.
Only an older porter seemed the least bit alarmed. “Mein Gott, I hope not,” he said, “I had four years in the last one and that was enough.”
Cowles decided to leave for Holland that night. She shared a train compartment with several Germans: three high-spirited housewives, a fat gentleman and a musician who spoke English.
Asked about news on the British and French declaration of war, the musician responded, “War? We’re not at war with England and France, just Poland.”
The housewives gasped when the musician translated for them. “I don’t believe it,” the fat man piped in, “Germany is only taking police action in Poland, no one will go to war for that.”
“You mustn’t believe rumors, they’re always wrong,” the musician lectured, then grinned as he drew his finger across his neck. “After we cut Poland’s throat, we’ll settle down to peace again.”
The Germans all found this rather reassuring as they settled in for the rest of their journey. “What a story,” Cowles wrote, “Germany on the eve of a world war and no one willing to believe it.”
Virginia Cowles, 29, was a New York socialite who, determined to become a serious reporter, had picked up and flown to the Spanish Civil War in 1937, where she covered both sides of the war, one of the very few reporters to do so.
By ’39 she was a roving correspondent for the Sunday Times of London and had earned her spot among the brethren (almost all men) of reporters who glided between the briefings, battlefronts and hotel bars of the world crises that had led up to it.
Two things struck her when she arrived in Berlin on Thursday, Aug. 31, the eve of war.
First, German officialdom — the ministers and mucky-mucks she’d seen in action from Spain to Prague — was not only lacking its usual bristling confidence, but seemed confused and depressed. One reporter told her the German press chief had actually broken down and cried at the morning briefing.
Second, the German people seemed to have little idea of what was actually going on.
Thinking about it, Cowles realized both things made sense. Every time she’d seen Nazi officials before — even, or especially, as they were taking her prisoner and threatening her with execution on the Czech border the year before — things had been going exactly their way.
The German people? They’d seen crises like this before, with armies mobilized and men sent to the front, and the Fuhrer had come through with a “bloodless victory” every time. The Rhineland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, why should this be any different?
The reason, which Cowles and German officials knew but which everyday Germans plainly didn’t (after all, there’d been little word of it in their press) was that this time, Britain and France intended to fight.
The world had been shocked only a week before with news of a Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact.
Hitler now had a free hand to crush Poland, as he’d been signaling he fully intended to do, and then turn his attention toward the rest of Europe. But Britain and France assured him they would fight if Poland were attacked.
Yes: Great Britain and France — exhausted economically, spiritually, and now diplomatically, having done everything in their power to avoid war — would, with little stomach for it, fight.
That Sept. 1 marked only the beginning, of course. Poland was divided between Hitler and Stalin within a month. France fell nine months later.
It would be another year and a half after that before the United States would enter the war. And while Britain would make it through, her power and prestige would not — those she would hand over to America.
Today America is the exhausted and reluctant warrior. But the boots still march, only today they march in the sands of Iraq, the suburbs of Aleppo and even the frontiers of Ukraine.
War? Who says there’s going to be a war?
Peggy Dooley was associate producer of the documentary “41on41” about President George H.W. Bush. She is writing a script about Virginia Cowles’ wartime experience.