added belief that any impartial plebiscite held in Austria
would prove that an overwhelming majority of the Austrian
people desired to remain within the Reich. I said that the
impression I had formed was that the solution of these
problems was not an insoluble question, but that it was
in every sense secondary and subordinate to the real and
practical security of which I had spoken.
Mussolini told me that approximately twelve hours
before my return to Rome he had received direct word from Berlin
that Hitler wished to confer with him. He told me that the
meeting had been arranged for ten A.M. on Monday, March 18th,
at the Brenner Pass. He said that throughout the course of
Ribbentrop's recent visit to Rome Ribbentrop had insisted that
Germany would consider no solution other than a military victory
and that any peace negotiations were impossible. He said that
Ribbentrop had stated that Germany would undertake an immediate
offensive, that she would conquer France with three or four
months and that thereafter Great Britain would rapidly crumble.
Mussolini said that he believed that the German military offen-
sire was in fact very close, and that it would be undertaken within a number of hours rather than
within a number of days. As he phrased it, "The minute hand is pointing to one minute
before midnight".
He said that if he was to have any success at all in
persuading Hitler to postpone the milltary offensive, he must have some hope to offer him that the
Allied Governments would not prove completely intransigent if negotiations were
undertaken with regard to German insistence upon "lebensraum".
He wished to know whether I would authorize him to communicate Hitler the impressions I had
formed with regard to the possibility of a negotiated solution of territorial and
political