Page "Joachim von Ribbentrop" Paragraph 85

As soon as the news broke in the morning of 1 September 1939 that Germany had invaded Poland, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini launched another desperate peace mediation plan intended to stop the German-Polish war from becoming a world war.

Mussolini's motives were in no way altruistic, but he was instead motivated entirely by a wish to escape the self-imposed trap of the Pact of Steel, which had obligated Italy either to go to war at a time when the country was entirely unprepared or to suffer the humiliation of having to declare neutrality, which make him appear cowardly.

The French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet acting on his own initiative told the Italian Ambassador to France, Baron Raffaele Guariglia, that France had accepted Mussolini's peace plan.

Bonnet had Havas issued a statement at midnight on 1 September saying :" The French government has today, as have several other Governments, received an Italian proposal looking to the resolution of Europe's difficulties.

After due consideration, the French government has given a " positive response ".

Though the French and the Italians were serious about Mussolini's peace plan, which called for an immediate ceasefire and a four-power conference à la Munich to consider Poland's borders, the British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax stated that unless the Germans withdrew from Poland immediately, then Britain would not attend the proposed conference.

Ribbentrop finally scuttled Mussolini's peace plan by stating that Germany had utterly no interest in a ceasefire, in a withdrawal from Poland and in attending the proposed peace conference.