Publisher's Synopsis
Berchtesgaden and the Anglo-French Plan With Nuremberg the crisis proper begins, though with lines tending to form differently from what might have been the case if the balance in London had not tipped in the afternoon of September 11 onto the side of caution and retreat. Poland still was on the fence; but Colonel Beck felt himself strengthened as against his pro-French and pro-British colleagues. Insistent demands began appearing in the Polish press that the final settlement in Czechoslovakia must not subject the Polish minority there to "discrimination" in comparison with the German minority. The Polish appraisal of how events probably would move was evidently being modified rapidly from the opinion indicated on September 9 by a paper as friendly to the Government as the Kurjer Polski, which then could still write in a strong tone about the necessity of understanding and opposing Germany's "game of blackmail and menace" without another moment's delay. Blackmail, it began to seem, was going to work again; and Poland was not above taking a cut on the side. Till Nuremberg, inner circles in both camps had put down Italy as potentially a neutral. She now moved over towards Germany. Mussolini's policy is understandable. It was incumbent on him to keep repeating that he was entirely, absolutely and irrevocably with Hitler -- up to the moment when he spoke and acted in a precisely contrary sense. There could be no grey zone of indecision in an affair like that! The judgment that at least until Nuremberg Mussolini intended to be neutral is obviously hard to substantiate. It can be based only on personal information, on comparatively small concrete indications, on a realization of how galling it had been for him to be reduced to the role of brilliant second, and on an understanding of the historical background which made the Italian people increasingly restless after they saw their traditional foes arrive in force on the Brenner.
