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‘That ought to be the case,’ said Stalin, beaming but vigilant. At 4 a.m. Hitler received Ribbentrop’s telegram: he and Stalin had divided Poland; Stalin was promised ex-Romanov limitrophes, parts of Finland, Baltics and Romania.^* Hitler greeted Ribbentrop as ‘the new Bismarck’ and ordered the Polish invasion. On 25 August, far away in Mongolia, Soviet tanks encircled Japanese forces, a victory that changed Japanese plans. Instead of attacking Russia, Japan would assault Britain and America. As for Stalin, he had found a winner: Zhukov, strong-willed, coarse, tough, would be the greatest general of the Second World War.

Until victory was secured, ‘I want nothing more than to be the first soldier of the Reich,’ Hitler, in a field-grey tunic, told the hushed Reichstag on 1 September, or he ‘would not live to see the end’ – a public warning of suicide. He compared himself to Frederick the Great, who had also ‘confronted a great coalition’ but ‘triumphed’.

As 1.5 million troops smashed into Poland that morning, Hitler ordered his henchmen to fight a new type of war. ‘Annihilation of Poland,’ he specified in notes kept by a general. ‘Hearts closed to pity. Brutal action … Maximum severity.’ Hitler despised democracies – ‘Worms! I saw them at Munich’ – but this time the worms turned: Britain and France declared war; Chamberlain sent an expeditionary force of 390,000 troops to support the French and reluctantly brought the indomitable but masterful Churchill back as first lord of the Admiralty.

FDR, realizing Chamberlain was damaged, wrote to ‘my dear Churchill’ secretly, encouraging him to ‘keep me in touch personally with anything you want me to know about’. But he was restrained by 62 per cent of Americans who wanted neutrality, by widespread antisemitism and by Ambassador Kennedy: ‘always has been an appeaser and always will be an appeaser’, said FDR. ‘Pain in the neck.’

Hitler ordered ‘a bitter ethnic struggle’ in Poland with ‘no legal bounds’. While annexing ex-Prussian provinces and creating a General Government to run the rest, he explained, ‘all we want there is to harvest labour’ and ‘cleanse the Reich of Jews and Polacks’. Around 1.7 million Polish Jews fell into German hands. The army was followed by five, later seven, special murder squads, SS Einzatzgruppen, created by Heydrich, now head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office / RSHA), combining the SD with battalions of ordinary policemen. They murdered all those on a death list (Special Prosecution Book) of 40,000 elite Poles. ‘There must be no Polish leaders,’ said Hitler. ‘Where Polish leaders exist they must be killed, however harsh that sounds.’ Some Einzatzgruppen commanders were coarse thugs with criminal backgrounds, but many were highly qualified – three commanders were doctors, as were nine of seventeen officers in Einsatzgruppe A – and middle class if not aristocratic. After the war, German generals propagated a myth that the Wehrmacht had played no part in Nazi atrocities. In fact, most officers not only acquiesced in and sanctioned the ‘ethnic–political tasks’ but assisted them; ordinary soldiers joined in and even took photographs. A very few, very brave soldiers refused to take part. Himmler attended some of the executions, telling the murderers, ‘I can be frank – I do nothing without the Führer’s knowledge.’^*

Although thousands of people were already involved in killing, it all depended on Hitler’s leadership. In November he flew to Munich to give his annual speech to ‘old fighters’ of the Beer Hall Putsch, ending his speech early and leaving – just as a bomb, planted by a lone assassin, Georg Elser, exploded. Hitler believed providence had spared him – ‘The fate of the Reich depends on me alone’ – which made his mission even more urgent: ‘We can only confront Russia if our hands are free in the west.’

A race between Britain and Germany to seize Norway was lost by the British. Chamberlain, no warlord, lost his authority. At 10.15 a.m., on 9 May 1940, he met the two contenders for his succession. Chamberlain and the Tory grandees preferred the foreign secretary, the earl of Halifax, nicknamed the Holy Fox, ex-viceroy of India. Halifax, a desiccated, self-righteous aristocrat with one withered arm lacking a hand, leaned towards negotiation with Hitler. Churchill, regarded as a piratical, bumptious, half-American warmonger, brooded in pugnacious silence until Halifax gave way.