1938 (34 page)

Poles and Hungarians were rewarded with a share of the spoils—here Hungarian troops enter Slovakia.

Canaris was also concerned about Hitler. He told the General Staff officer Groscurth, “He is already onto the next step; thinking about Romania, Ukraine etc.” On the 12th Henderson signed as many as 150 autographs in the rally’s diplomatic stand, now fragrant from the presence of so many Austrian girls in dirndls. Goebbels noticed them too: “I greet a hundred delicious Austrian girls, who can hardly contain their excitement.” Goebbels adorned the cards with his signature, and Henderson was happy to hand them out to Sudeten Germans too.

Hitler’s final speech went for Beneš’s throat. “The Germans in Czechoslovakia are neither defenceless nor are they deserted,” he bellowed. It had an “indescribable” effect on its audience. Hitler’s liaison with the Wilhelmstrasse, Walther Hewel, said that Chamberlain himself had been alarmed by the tone of Hitler’s speech at the rally. Göring too delivered a particularly stirring piece of invective and then took to his bed, leaving Hitler in the company of Ribbentrop, who wanted only war and as soon as possible. When four of his most senior ambassadors clubbed together to tell him this was a mistake, he banished them from Nuremberg and sent them on leave for the rest of the month. The effect of the rally was immediate: Hitler’s and Göring’s oratory inspired civil disobedience in the ethnic Bohemian German towns of Eger and Karlsbad. Czech and Jewish property was attacked. The Czechs responded by firing on the crowds and declaring martial law. In Prague the people went to work carrying gas masks. Henlein fled to Bavaria to organize a Freikorps to fight in his native land. It was at that moment that French resolve collapsed; their cabinet vote was split, with six calling for war and four against. Their leader, Daladier, asked Chamberlain to see Hitler and try to make the best deal he could that would forestall the need for France to honor its obligations to the Little Entente.

In reality Chamberlain’s mission had already been prepared by Göring and Henderson on September 8—the rally and ensuing chaos had nothing to do with it. The Luftwaffe chief had invited Henderson up to his home at nearby Veldenstein, where the suggestion was aired that the Sudeten question be settled by direct talks. Göring dropped hints about a hunting party at Rominten at the end of the month, saying that he hoped that the Czechs were not going to disrupt it—meaning that peace could be maintained. He even promised Halifax the four best stags in Germany if Britain were to disclaim any interest in Czechoslovakia. Henderson filed a report and had it taken to London on a private plane. On September 13, Chamberlain proposed flying to Germany for a meeting.

As there was no doubt about Hitler’s plans to invade, Halder conveyed the message to General Witzleben on the 13th. The opposition had to act fast. While the two men were talking, news came in that Henderson had told Ribbentrop of Chamberlain’s intention to visit Hitler at the Berghof. Chamberlain’s note was passed to Schmidt to translate: “Having regard to the increasingly critical situation, I propose to visit you immediately in order to make an attempt to find a peaceful solution. I could come to you by air and am ready to leave tomorrow. Please inform me of the earliest time you can receive me, and tell me the place of the meeting. I should be grateful for a very early reply. Neville Chamberlain.”

The carpet had been pulled out from under the feet of the plotters. They could not proceed while Hitler was talking peace. Ribbentrop had been right all along: The British and the French would not fight. The interpreter Schmidt set off for Munich. He was fully aware of the plot. Weizsäcker’s final piece of advice was: “Keep your mind quite clear. . . . Tomorrow at Berchtesgaden it will be a matter of war and peace.”

“Peace-envoy Chamberlain” (as the Germans called him) flew together with Sir Horace Wilson and Sir William Strang on the 15th to Munich, where he was met by Ribbentrop and Schmidt. They traveled to Berchtesgaden on Hitler’s train. It took the British prime minister seven hours to reach him. Not only had he just taken his first airplane, but there had been turbulence on the flight. Dressed in Nazi uniform, Hitler received him on the steps of his home. In reply to Hitler’s “German greeting” Chamberlain waved his hat, as the inevitable umbrella hung from his left arm. After tea the two men went to Hitler’s study, accompanied only by Hitler’s interpreter, Schmidt. By divesting themselves of advisors, they were able to rid themselves of Ribbentrop.

The Poles had thrown a potential spanner into the works of Hitler’s careful plans. The Sejm had been dissolved, and new elections in November threatened to bring in Germany’s enemies. The German-Polish cooperation that had been Josef Beck’s policy was hanging in the balance, as the Poles were expected to lend a hand in carving up Czechoslovakia by snatching the Teschen pocket in Czech Silesia. Many Poles thought Beck’s policy brought Poland too close to Germany, and they feared finding the country on the same side as Germany in a war. Leading Nazis also believed the British were being cunning by off-loading increasing amounts of the guilt onto Germany should war break out. Hitler was more open to suggestion than he might have appeared.

The Berghof discussions lasted three hours. Outside the rain pelted down, and the wind howled. Chamberlain wanted to know if Hitler would be satisfied by the cession of the Sudeten areas. Hitler mentioned the Hungarians and Polish claims to Czech territory, but he was not interested in anything else. He exclaimed that he was ready to risk world war to settle the matter. Chamberlain rejoindered, “If that is so, why did you let me come to Berchtesgaden? Under the circumstances it is best for me to return at once. Anything else now seems pointless.” At this Hitler conceded that if Chamberlain were to accept the principle of self-determination, then there could be room for talk. He promised not to attack the Czechs before they met again, unless, that is, the Czechs did something particularly atrocious. Chamberlain told Hitler he needed to consult his colleagues. He spent the night in the Grand Hotel Berchtesgadenerhof before traveling back to London with the news. He took with him the impression that Hitler was a man who would stick to his word—not that he had that word. He had not brought an interpreter and had left without a copy of the minutes, because Ribbentrop had churlishly denied him one—an act of private revenge.

At dinner on the 15th, Eva Braun’s friends mocked the old-fashioned Englishman who had seemed so wedded to his umbrella. Hitler was pleased that “the old man took an aeroplane for the first time in his life in order to come and see me.” Hitler had made a halfhearted offer to go to London but had expressed the fear that he would be heckled by Jews. Chamberlain had to some extent got the measure of Hitler too: He told the cabinet that he was “the commonest little dog he had ever seen.”

After the Berchtesgaden talks Schmidt informed Erich Kordt of the conversations between the two men. Kordt took the record to Oster to show that Hitler had not abandoned his war plans. He wanted the terms imposed on the Czechs to be so humiliating that they would refuse to accept; then he could strike. The opposition was now fired up again and waiting for Hitler’s return to Berlin.

Chamberlain’s visit had been a small success. His great achievement, if it might be expressed that way, was to get Beneš to accept detaching the Sudeten areas from Czechoslovakia and hand them over to Germany. This obliged Hitler to drop his plans to swallow up the rest of Bohemia and Moravia—for the time being. Goebbels consoled himself that even if their spoils were limited to the Sudeten areas, they would still have put themselves in a better position strategically to take Prague the next time around. The Czechs vented their frustration in what they believed to be privacy. Masaryk got wind of the talks on the 14th and referred to Chamberlain’s right-hand man Sir Horace Wilson as “the Sow.”

Hitler summoned Goebbels and a small staff to the Berghof. He was going to need his propaganda machine (Goebbels was the original “spin doctor”). Alarmed both by recent Czech violence toward ethnic Germans and by German scaremongering, streams of refugees were seeking shelter in Silesia. Goebbels had foreign journalists sent into their camps to witness their despair. Ward Price was brought up to Berchtesgaden to interview Hitler. They were very happy with the results. In the meantime Hitler and his little pressman distracted themselves by watching popular films and reading the minutes of Beneš’s conversations with Jan Masaryk in London. They would have been amused to hear the British envoy Runciman dismissed as “the Lord who wrote the mad book,” and Goebbels in particular would have liked the references to the “fat Field Marshal”—Göring.

Beneš, they concluded, was the problem. He was “dangerous, mendacious, sly and scheming.” They were not wide of the mark: Beneš and his ministers were desperately trying to find friends abroad who would balk at negotiations and press for war. The former Foreign Secretary Eden was one of these. The Germans were later able to show the British that the Czechs were conniving at the overthrow of the cabinet. On September 19 they had a meeting with the Labor Party leader Clement Attlee. Churchill had been sounded out and had apparently expressed his hope that they “would not put up with it.” On the afternoon of the 22nd there was an optimistic report that Chamberlain’s cabinet was on the point of resigning. The Czechs also hoped for a change of government in France and referred to the foreign minister Georges-Etienne Bonnet as “the Swine.” When the Poles offered to find a solution to the Danzig problem, Hitler was triumphant. In ten years he would have managed to reverse not only the punitive clauses of the Treaty of Versailles but also those of the Treaty of Münster, which closed the Thirty Years War.

Cadogan was detailed to tell Beneš to cede the Sudetenland on the 18th. The Soviet Union was exerting pressure on Germany by massing troops at the Russian border (it had no common border with Czechoslovakia), but Hitler was still undeterred and continued his military preparations. The state the Allies created at Versailles was falling apart. Encouraged by Henlein, the Slovak People’s Party demanded autonomy for their half of the country. This was granted after the debacle at Munich. On the 19th, London and Paris agreed to waive the plebiscite but at the same time refused to grant concessions to Poland and Hungary. Hitler was furious with Horthy for dragging his heels. The Polish ambassador Józef Lipski was conjured up and told to make a gesture. Goebbels thought they had it in the bag, and the Führer “a genius.” Urged on by Göring, the Poles and Hungarians began to wake up on September 21. The Poles demanded a plebiscite in Teschen, and on the 22nd the Hungarians finally made a similar appeal for the Magyar areas of Slovakia.

In Berlin the opposition was gritting its teeth. Something of Germany’s desperate economic problems became clear from a meeting between Ulrich von Hassell and Schacht on the day of Chamberlain’s talks with Hitler. Schacht was bitter about the Führer and referred to him as a “swindler.” He did not think that the talks with Chamberlain would do anything to prevent war. Schacht made it clear that Hitler needed more than just the border areas if he were to stave off economic disaster: All his secret funds and all Austria’s stolen reserves had been used up. He thought Germany was already in the red. When Hassell cautiously alluded to Schacht’s own responsibility in this, Schacht denied it. Even as a cabinet minister he was informed of nothing. He did not know how they could get out of the mess unless they started printing money, and when that happened, he would resign.

On the same day the Sudeten Freikorps seized the towns of Eger and Asch. More and more Sudeten Germans were crossing the border into Germany to avoid the conflict they imagined would break out any day now. A camp was built for them in Hirschberg in the Riesengebirge. Klemperer saw members of the Freikorps in Dresden on the 20th, poised to strike. He had no doubt as to the outcome: The Reich would win in the long run, either by force or bluff. Nor did Hitler have any doubts for the time being.

The raiding party that was to attack the Chancellery had been supplied with weapons by the Abwehr and lodged in safe houses and apartments all over Berlin. The chief fear was that the putsch would be thwarted by the SS. In Munich, General Hoepner’s armored division was ready to move against the SS, should there be an attempt to intervene. The opposition had reason to believe that Hitler’s end was approaching. When Schulenburg saw streams of military vehicles heading toward Berlin from Mecklenburg on the 17th, he said, “Look, in a few days these troops will liberate us from the nightmare of Hitler.” On September 22 he hurriedly dispatched his growing family to the country estate of a friend to get them out of the way in the event of an uprising.

AT TEN minutes to 9 on the night of the 20th, Masaryk reported to Beneš that “the Old Man will soon be on his travels again.” At 11 PM on September 21, Hitler, Goebbels, and Ribbentrop flew from Bavaria to Bad Godesberg near Bonn on the Rhine to meet Chamberlain. Hitler told the others that he wanted the Poles and Hungarians to attack so that he could push all the way to Prague. He was going to grant autonomy to Slovakia, but not to Bohemia or Moravia. The generals plied him with memos, but he refused to be shaken from his path. A few hours later, Chamberlain took to the skies for the third time in his life. Hitler lodged at one of his favorite haunts, the Hotel Dreesen, which had been refurbished for the occasion, and Chamberlain was put up with his party in the Hotel Petersberg on the other side of the river. The British prime minister had been able to win over the French, and after refusing at first, the Czechs had also given in. There was to be no plebiscite; a commission would settle the areas of mixed population and decree where transfers of population were to take place. Czechoslovakia’s current alliances would be dissolved. Instead Britain would form part of an international body to guarantee Czech independence and neutrality.