Hitler, his generals and the Reichstag speech of October 1939

Adolf Hitler leans over a map that covers a whole table while a general traces a route with his pencil; officers stand in silhouette before wall maps; a man in an open car salutes a march past, and Joseph Goebbels raises both hands at the lectern. In the Kroll Opera House Hitler reads his speech below Hermann Göring's presiding desk; elsewhere he smiles among officers, and Göring laughs beside him at a map table, facing a bald man who resembles Mussolini. All of it is German newsreel and propaganda footage.

On 6 October 1939 Hitler told the Reichstag that he had no war aims against Britain and France and offered them peace on the basis of the conquest of Poland. Both governments refused within a week. On 9 October Hitler ordered preparations for an attack in the west, which was postponed again and again through the winter.