Adolf Hitler

On 22 August 1939 Hitler summoned his senior commanders to the Berghof at Obersalzberg and told them that Poland would be attacked, that the object was the destruction of a people and not the reaching of a line, and that they should close their hearts to pity. The Molotov–Ribbentrop pact was signed the following day; the invasion began on 1 September. That much is established from the captured German records. What is contested is whether one further sentence — about the Armenians — belongs in the transcript of that afternoon.