This is Berlin. On May 12th, the visit of the Italian foreign minister was hailed as a sign of axis unity. But a source in the Italian embassy confided the real topic was the finalization of a pact of steel. The Germans were relentlessly applying pressure to lock Italy into a military pact before they made their next move on Poland. On May 23rd, the news was quiet, but I have obtained information about a top secret meeting where Hitler told his top 15 generals, "Danzig is not the object for us. It is a matter of expanding our living space in the east." He told them he had decided to attack Poland at the first suitable opportunity. While the German people were being told of peace, the leadership had irrevocably committed to a war of conquest. By May 25th, a new and intensified press campaign against Poland was in full swing, filled with fabricated stories of atrocities. A foreign diplomat just returned from the Polish corridor told me the stories are almost entirely false. It is the exact same pattern used before Czechoslovakia. First comes the manufactured hysteria.