Epilogue.

At 7.00pm, on Thursday, August 31st 1939. Otto Huette; chief toolmaker in the prototypes workshop of the Friedrich Krupp AG, Borbeck Munitions and Heavy Industrial Plant in Essen, pushed his oil-stained cap to the back of his head and lit one of his smelly Roth-Händle cigarettes as he studied the block of shiny metal engraved with the weird inscription that was clamped into the machine vice attached to his workbench. He didn't have a clue as to what the hell this metal was. He had never seen anything like it. The Plant manager been instructed by ReichsFührer-SS Himmler's Office in Berlin to section it for analysis to ascertain if it could be utilised as a weapons-grade material.

He grinned, and dragged the pungent tobacco smoke deep into his lungs. This bloody block had taken the teeth straight out of the powered bandsaw blade as easily as shelling peas... you could ride bare-arsed to Berlin on what was left of the blade without so much as a scratch. The grinders didn't even mark it, and he had burned out Christ-knows how many case-hardened, high-speed drills without as much as a bloody scratch on the damned thing. Now it was time to stop pissing about.

His young apprentice, Jorge Eberhardt had been sent down to the stores to get yet another two-litre can of cutting fluid. He picked up the hacksaw with the special blade, and carefully ran his thumb along the teeth. This blade was made of made of Krupps "Widia"... a tungsten-carbide cobalt. Its hardness was little affected by heat, and it retained a sharp cutting edge even at red heat. This blade would slice through the hardest metal alloys that they used to manufacture machine tools... it should do the job; each blade cost nearly six hundred Reichsmarks. If this didn't work, then nothing ever would.

He glanced at the big clock on the workshop wall. Where was the little sod?... probably flirting with young Estelle, the pretty blonde stores clerk. Well; he couldn't hang about here all evening. The time was getting on and he wanted to have a few beers. He picked up the hacksaw and laid the blade carefully on the metal block. He would start the first cut about one and a half centimetres in, parallel to the longest edge of the engraved face. If it worked; the slice would make a nice paperweight for ReichsFührer-SS Himmler's desk. He began to saw carefully, with slow, flowing strokes. The blade was actually taking metal out! A couple more strokes and he could pour in some cutting oil. That would make the blade's work much easier, and reduce the heat build-up.

Jorge eventually returned with the fresh can of cutting fluid. Huette paused.

'Well? Did you manage to talk her into getting her drawers off tonight?'

Jorge blushed scarlet, and said nothing.

Laughing; Huette continued his cutting. The blade was starting to slice through the strange metal without too much effort. Thin wisps of smoke were spiralling up as the blade became hotter. Young Jorge watched, and poured more cutting fluid into the deepening groove at Huette's signal. Suddenly; the resistance of the blade cutting through the metal lessened, and a nerve-shredding shriek that set their teeth on edge and made the hairs on their necks stand up, echoed around the workshop. Huette glanced at Jorge.

'Fuck me! That was a weird sound. Look... it seems to be hollow.'

He loosened the jaws of the machine vice, turned the metal block through ninety degrees, and began to make a fresh cut. This was repeated twice more along the other faces of the block until the cut was continuous. The strange, eerie shriek did not occur again during the cutting. He laid the hot hacksaw down carefully on the workbench out of accidental reach. That hot blade would give a nasty burn if it was inadvertently touched.

Huette released the block from the machine vice, turned it through ninety degrees, and re-clamped it into the vice.

Jorge handed him a sharpened bolster chisel and a two-kilogramme forge hammer. Huette carefully positioned the bolster blade in the cut and struck a sharp blow with the hammer. The sliver of metal fell onto the workshop bench with a dull thud. As he reached out to retrieve it; Jorge glanced into the dark interior of the block. His eyes widened, and a horrible, cold sensation washed over him. He gave Huette a frightened look, and pointed.

Huette peered inside the hollow block. He too, was gripped by a sudden cold shiver. The block contained something that looked like... No! That was crap. It couldn't possibly be. A dreadful, malevolent atmosphere of a presence that was almost palpable seemed to have suddenly crept into the workshop. Very carefully, he released the vice jaws and tipped the open side of the block down towards the workbench. A black and shrivelled, claw-like, severed hand grasping the broken hilt of a sword thudded onto the surface of the workbench. A large, opaque garnet was mounted in the pommel of the sword. As they gaped at this gruesome relic with growing unease; they saw a tiny, blood-red spark appear deep within the heart of the garnet, which slowly flared and grew brighter.

Leaving this grisly discovery where it had fallen; Otto Huette and Jorge Eberhardt ran out of the workshop as though the very hounds of hell were snapping at their heels, as they rushed to report their grisly find to the Works supervisor.

At the very moment that the Garnet flared; the minute hand of the clock on the workshop wall in Essen reached eight o'clock. Five- hundred kilometres away to the east, at 20.00 hrs precisely; the audience was listening to Gleiwitzer Sender... a German long-wave radio transmitter seven kilometres from the Polish border on the German-Polish frontier. Suddenly the popular music programme broke, and excited German voices announced that the town of Gleiwitz had been invaded by Polish irregular formations marching towards the emitting station. Then the station broadcast went dead. When received again, Polish was being spoken.

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German army intelligence... the Abwehr; and the SS had put into action the first stage of "Unternehmen Himmler"... Operation Himmler; the first of twenty-one orchestrated incidents along the Germano-Polish border intended to give the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany.

The early evening sun was settling over the giant, one-hundred-and-ten-metres tall, wooden radio mast of Gleiwitzer Sender as seven SS men in civilian clothes drove through the front gates in two unmarked cars and pulled up outside the main building. In one of their cars was Franciszek Honiok, a forty-three-year-old local German Silesian farmer who was known to sympathise with Poland, and had been picked out the previous day by the Gestapo as the person who would provide the necessary "proof" of Polish aggression against Germany. He had been snatched at gunpoint from his farm in the rural community of Polomia and ordered to dress in the light khaki uniform of the Polish army, which the SS team had previously acquired; before being tied up and taken to the radio station.

Inside the radio station the nine members of the broadcast staff were confronted by the SS gunmen. Several shots were fired, and the terrified staff were ordered to do as they were told. One of the Polish-speaking members of the team grabbed the main microphone and shouted:

"Uwage! Tu Radiostacja Gliwicka. Rozglosnia znajduje sie w rekach Polskich."…

'Attention! This is Radio Station Gliwice. The broadcasting station is in Polish hands.'

There then followed an inflammatory statement urging the Polish minority in Silesia to take up arms against Adolf Hitler.

As the SS team left; Honiok was killed by lethal injection, shot through the forehead; and his body was left draped across the entrance steps to the radio station. Meanwhile, all along the Polish border, units of the German Wehrmacht were taking their final positions for the launch of "Fall Weiss"... "Case White"... the German strategic plan for the Invasion of Poland.

On the day following the Gleiwitz incident, at 05:45am, Friday 1st September 1939; the first German units crossed the border, invading Poland from the north, south, and west. At 10.00am the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, summoned the German Embassy Chargé d'Affaires to ask if he had any explanation for this "very serious situation." The Chargé admitted only that the Germans were defending themselves against a Polish attack.

At 9.00pm that evening, Sir Nevile Henderson; Ambassador of Great Britain to Germany met with Hitler's Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and simply handed him a note containing the official British response... that, unless the German Government were prepared immediately to give His Majesty's Government satisfactory assurances that the German Government had suspended all aggressive action against Poland, and were prepared promptly to withdraw their forces from Polish territory, His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom would, without hesitation, fulfil their obligations to Poland, under the Anglo-Polish Mutual Assistance Pact, which had been signed in late August.

An hour later, M. Robert Coulondre, the French Ambassador to Germany, met with von Ribbentrop and handed him a similarly worded note, which had been composed in coordination with the British.

To Hitler, the idea of ordering his soldiers to halt in their tracks and withdraw was nothing short of ludicrous, and he decided not to respond at all to either the British or French notes.

At 09.00am on Sunday morning, September 3rd, the British ultimatum was formally delivered by Ambassador Henderson to the Reichs Foreign Ministry in Berlin. It stated:

"Although this communication was made more than twenty-four hours ago, no reply has been received, but German attacks upon Poland have been continued and intensified. I have accordingly the honour to inform you that unless not later than 11.00am. British Summer Time to-day, September 3rd, satisfactory assurances to the above effect have been given by the German Government and have reached His Majesty's Government in London, a state of war will exist between the two countries as from that hour."

Shortly after the British deadline had passed; von Ribbentrop summoned Ambassador Henderson back to the Reichs Foreign Ministry on Wilhelmstrasse, and informed him that Germany flatly refused to cooperate.

Ambassador Coulondre was received by von Ribbentrop at 12:30pm, and asked him whether he could give a satisfactory reply to his note handed to him on September 1st at 10.00pm. Von Ribbentrop replied:

"If the French Government feels bound by its commitments to Poland to enter into the conflict, I can only regret it, for we have no feeling of hostility towards France. It is only if France attacks us that we shall fight her, and this would be on her part, a war of aggression."

Ambassador Coulondre then asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs if he was to infer from his utterances that the reply of the Government of the Reich to the letter of September 1st was in the negative. Von Ribbentrop replied:

"Yes."

Ambassador Coulondre then stated that it was his painful duty to notify von Ribbentrop that as from 5.00pm, the French Government would find itself obliged to fulfil the obligations that France had contracted towards Poland, and which were known to the German Government.

Sunday morning, 3rd September 1939.

Almost everyone in Britain was listening to the wireless. The calm and authoritative "voice" of the BBC Home Service... the deputy chief announcer, Alvar Lidell suddenly interrupted the popular gramophone records music programme. Lidell announced:

"At 11.15... That is, in about two minutes, the Prime Minister will broadcast to the Nation. Please stand by."

People braced themselves for the worst. In those two minutes, there was time for older listeners to remember the carnage of the trenches in the First World War. There was time for those who had harboured misgivings over the British Government's stance of non-interference in Spain to now be convinced that it was, indeed, a lost opportunity to perhaps, check the remorseless march of Continental Fascism.

There was just time for a few to curse the policy of appeasement, which was widely regarded as an incitement to the German Nation to preserve Hitler in power; and for many to be obliged to ponder the newspaper headlines of the previous two days, which had reported the heavy civilian bombing of Polish cities by the Germans. The musical programme did not continue.

At 11:15am; struggling to keep the anguish from his voice, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain broadcast to the Nation, the British Declaration of War against Nazi Germany...

"I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street. This morning, the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note, stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us."

Then came the awful words most feared by all.

"I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently, this country is at war with Germany."

The announcement to the French People of France's Declaration of War was made later in the day by Edouard Daladier, President of the Council of Ministers.

The Greatest and most Destructive War in history had begun.