760C.62/1069: Telegram
The Ambassador in France (Bullitt) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 27—8:50 p.m.]
1620. In the course of our conversation tonight Daladier said that in spite of the feeling of many persons that all the messages that Hitler was sending and his failure to make war while the French Army was being mobilized indicated that Hitler might be afraid to face the issue, he could see nothing in Hitler’s latest note which indicated that Hitler was weakening in his determination to make war if necessary to get Danzig.
While I was at the Ministry of War however I talked with Daladier’s two closest advisors and both expressed the opinion that Hitler would not dare to make war. Incidentally there is no truth whatever in the rumors that the French Government has made any offers to the Italian Government. It is Daladier’s conviction that if the French Government should try to buy off the Italians at the present time the concessions to Italy would be interpreted in Germany merely as a sign that France was afraid of war and would encourage Germany to make war on Poland. From an unimpeachable source I learn that the Nazis in Germany are saying to each other that France is about to give Tunis to Italy and that this indicates that France is afraid to fight which confirms Daladier’s opinion.
The improvement in the relations between France and Spain has been so extraordinarily rapid since the agreement between Hitler and [Page 378] Stalin that Daladier said to me somewhat jokingly but not altogether that the man who today possibly might draw Mussolini away from his military alliance with Hitler was General Franco.
Daladier and several persons at the Foreign Office said to me today that the improvement in relations between France and Japan since the conclusion of the pact between Germany and the Soviet Union has been so great that the French Government would take active steps at once to try to draw Japan into the French-British orbit and settle the war in China on a basis satisfactory to General Chiang Kai-shek if it were not for the simple physical fact that no one in Paris had time to give to this problem.