On the evening of May 9 last week, Adolf Hitler went to a cinema in Berlin, a sentimental musical film like The Student Prince. His No. 2 man, Field Marshal Hermann Goring, and Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels attended the premiere of Cavour, a play on which Benito Mussolini, onetime journalist, collaborated. Italy's dictator promised his royalty for the first evening, and half of all his subsequent royalties, to the German Red Cross. Field Marshal Goring arrived late, which made his presence, in resplendent white uniform, the more conspicuous.
A few hours later, just before dawn of May 10, began another show—the biggest and ghastliest show of the generation, perhaps of all the age. It was a titanic extravaganza prepared for seven years by Hitler, Goring, Goebbels and all.their Nazi craftsmen. Mere curtain-raisers for this show had been their absorption of Austria, their bludgeoning of Czecho-Slovakia, their rape of Poland. Only the prologue was their swallowing of Denmark, their kidnapping of Norway and imprisonment of Sweden. Now came the reil thing—grand-scale Blitzkrieg across Luxembourg, Belgium and The Netherlands with an end view either to conquering the British Isles or smashing France, or both. Adolf Hitler's visionary exaltation at this historic hour vibrated in his order-of-the-day: Soldiers of the West Front! The hour of the decisive fight for the future of the German nation has come.
For 300 years it has been the aim of the English and French rulers to prevent any real consolidation of Europe and, above all, to keep Germany weak and impotent.
For this purpose France alone has declared war on Germany 31 times in 200 years. . . . What they wanted to strike was always the German people. Their responsible men quite openly admit this to be their aim*: Germany must be dashed to pieces and reduced to small States.
With that the Reich will lose its political power and with it the chance of securing for the German people its living rights on this earth.
For this reason all my peace overtures have been rejected and war was declared on us. . . .
The German people has no inimical feeling toward the English or French people. It stands, however, before the question whether it will live or perish. . . .
Soldiers of the West Front! The hour for you has now come. The fight beginning today decides the fate of the German nation for the next 1,000 years. . . .
Adolf Hitler, "First Soldier" of Greater Germany, sped through the dawn of May 10 to headquarters somewhere behind the West Front. Before the sun rose, a horde of machine-trained German troops began going through their appointed motions.