1938 (35 page)

Chamberlain had been receiving reassurances from Henderson, who had been speaking to a Göring anxious to minimize the risk of war. Sadly it was not Göring who was tugging at Hitler’s sleeve now, but the warhungry Ribbentrop. Göring had been lured away by the stags of Rominten, taking his old Richthofen Squadron cronies and Tsar Boris of Bulgaria with him, and was devoting himself to ridding the forests of East Prussia of horned beasts.

Chamberlain was having no such luck. After the preliminaries, he was taken to a map, on which the Germans had carved out a very large slice of the Czech cake for themselves. Then, to his astonishment and dismay, Hitler said it was too late anyway. Events of the past few days had made his offer unacceptable.

He again mentioned the Poles and the Hungarians and the grievances of the Sudetenländer; he said the matter needed to be settled by October 1. The Czechs had to withdraw from the areas he had marked on a map, and allow these to be occupied by German armies. The immediate German occupation of the Sudetenland was the essential condition. It may have been that Hitler had received word that Beneš had no more intention of honoring his word than the Führer had, although this was vigorously denied by Masaryk on the 28th. Göring’s Research Bureau had intercepted some revealing conversations between Masaryk, Mastny, and Osusky—the Czech ambassador in Paris—spiced up with rude references to members of the British and French governments. Göring had presented the file to Henderson with obvious delight. They were calculated to make the Czech case even less sympathetic. After three hours of discussion Hitler took his guest out on the terrace: “Oh, Mr Prime Minister, I am so sorry: I had looked forward to showing you this beautiful view of the Rhine . . . but now it is hidden by the mist.”

Both parties withdrew to their hotels. All night a motorboat plied the Rhine, taking messages from one to the other. Chamberlain had failed to understand that Hitler intended to destroy the Czech state and that he was simply using the German minority as a pretext. Hitler for his part had realized that he could safely ask for more, as Chamberlain was bound to concede. When Hitler refused to budge the following morning, Chamberlain sent word that there was nothing more for him to do, and he would return to London. Hitler entrusted his reply to Schmidt. It was in German, and his interpreter was to read it to Chamberlain, translating it as he went along. It took about an hour; then Schmidt, fortified with “the right stuff,” fled through the lines of journalists back to the ferry and the Rhine.

There was a final discussion between the heads of state at 10:30 PM on the 23rd. The British prime minister insisted that Sudeten Germans control the evacuation of the Czechs, rather than German troops. The Nazis thought this was another of Beneš’s tricks. In response Hitler insisted that the Czechs start to vacate the border areas on the 26th and complete them in forty-eight hours. Chamberlain threw up his arms in outrage, while Henderson, who liked to toss in a word or two of German, called it “
Ein Diktat
” (a reference to the hated “dictated peace” of Versailles). At this moment of deadlock, the door opened, and an official brought Hitler a note. He read it and asked Schmidt to translate it for the British. It was Beneš’s order to mobilize. There was some question as to whether the Czechs had intended to wreck the talks by summoning their men to the colors; alternatively it might have been an Anglo-French ploy to force Hitler to compromise.

Hitler made his final “concession”: He took a pencil and changed the date for the Czech withdrawal to October 1, the date set down long before for the attack on Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain brightened, and Hitler told him that most notorious lie: that this would be the last territorial demand he would make in Europe. Chamberlain was to relay this pledge to the House of Commons. Before Chamberlain returned to Britain, Hitler’s official photographer, the drunkard Hoffmann, was able to snap the two leaders standing beside the “palm of peace” in the hotel lobby.

Halifax thought things had gone far enough. To Chamberlain’s dismay, the British cabinet, which met on Sunday, September 25, refused to accept Hitler’s demands and pledged support to France should it wish to launch military action. By all reports, however, the French were woefully unprepared for war. On behalf of the Czechs, Jan Masaryk handed over a memorandum rejecting the Bad Godesberg proposals. Daladier and Bonnet arrived in London to see Chamberlain and Halifax. As Goebbels had noted, Beneš was tougher than Schuschnigg, and he thought the Czech ambassador to London superior to Dirksen—who was “shitting himself.”

Britain began to lumber toward war. The French got tough, manned the Maginot Line, and mobilized 500,000 men; the Russians voiced their readiness to move too. Hitler was convinced that Beneš would brazen it out, and he was worried about the Poles and whether they would give him the backing he craved. As it was, they made a small move and partially mobilized their armies, while the Italians called up three years of reserves. Hitler’s other ally, Hungary, did nothing whatsoever, much to his fury. Göring had been sent on a special mission to Horthy but returned empty-handed.

Chamberlain had another card to play. He sent his closest advisor, Sir Horace Wilson, to Berlin with a letter asking Hitler to negotiate with the Czech government directly, with the British present as a third party. He was also to warn Hitler that France would honor her commitments to the Czechs, and Britain hers to France. When Hitler heard from Wilson that the Czechs had rejected his demands, he became overexcited, jumped out of his seat, and began to shout: “The Germans are being treated like niggers; one would not dare treat even the Turks like that.” Hitler stopped short of biting the carpet. He told Goebbels he was pleased with his performance—the tantrums were a sham.

Jochen Klepper was in Krummhübel, a resort near the Czech border in the Riesengebirge. He gave a firsthand account; he could hear shooting in the distance. A Czech frontier post had been attacked with grenades. “Now we have arrived at the last consequence of the ‘Peace’ of Versailles. Eight million Czechs against three million Sudeten Germans; seventy-five million Germans against eight million Czechs! Twenty years ago the seed of all this was planted.”

Goebbels may have been thinking wishfully when he described the mood of “his” Berliners that autumn: “half war mania and half determination.” It was his idea that Hitler should address them at the Sportpalast on the 26th. Despite the apparent enthusiasm of the Berlin crowd, Goebbels was not taking any chances. The “audience should represent the people only,” which meant he was going to rig it. On the night, the Führer reiterated his mendacious claim that this venture was his last territorial demand. He found easy meat in the Allied principle of self-determination: The Czech state was a lie, there was no Czechoslovakia, there were just Czechs and Slovaks, and the Slovaks did not like the Czechs. A catalogue of lies and exaggerations followed. The decision lay with Beneš: peace or war. Either he gave the Czech Germans their freedom, or the Germans would snatch it for them. “Now let Herr Beneš make his choice.” Groscurth called it “a horrible, undignified rant.”

War seemed unavoidable. In Washington, President Roosevelt was alarmed enough to make an appeal for peace and to tell Chamberlain to negotiate to the last moment. The threat was keenly felt in the concentration camps too. In Dachau they realized that if the conflict broke out, it would be curtains for them. They were perfectly aware that any lip service to international opinion or law would be jettisoned at that point. They noted the disappearance of their guards with trepidation. The younger SS men were sent to the Czech border and were replaced by older men of a more kindly disposition than the usual eighteen-year-old sadists. The bubble burst when Chamberlain flew to Munich at the end of the month; the young men returned and resumed their brutal ways.

ON THE morning of the 27th, Sir Horace Wilson found Hitler obdurate. Not even the mention of Britain’s need to support France’s mobilization had any effect. Hitler claimed to be wholly indifferent as to whether there was a European war: “So—next week we’ll all find ourselves at war with each other.” After Wilson left, Hitler assembled yet more elements of the Wehrmacht to go into action on the 30th. The gambler Hitler had been more impressed with British moves than he appeared, however, and he was prepared to lend an ear to the doves who made up the majority of his entourage. Once again the only other warmonger was Ribbentrop. Another intimate member of Hitler’s circle who had increasing reservations about war was Goebbels, but he was still keeping his head down because of the fallout from his affair with Lida Baarova.

That day Hassell lunched with a number of conservative Germans at the Continental in Berlin. One of those present was Popitz, the acting minister of finance. Popitz told him that speeches like that which the Führer had just delivered at the Sportspalast gave him physical nausea. There were also fears that Hitler’s next move would be to proceed against the “upper stratum”—as he called it. Before lunch Hassell had had a meeting with Emil Georg von Strauss, president of the Deutsche Bank. He was “one of the first business leaders to go over to Hitler. He is now filled with the greatest anxiety and disgust.” It seemed certain that Hitler would go to war.

The German army was on the point of mutiny. There were desperate worries about the weakness of Germany’s western defenses. France could bring sixty-five divisions to bear against a dozen German at the most. Meanwhile the Czechs had called a million men to arms. The German people were not enthusiastic. In some cities open criticism was heard in public places. When an armed division rumbled through the streets of Berlin for an hour and a half on the evening of September 27, the Berliners observed them with “frigid silence.” At the Foreign Office Spitzy told Kordt, “Look at the people’s faces, filled with pale horror at the prospect of war.” At the beginning Hitler stood on his balcony to watch the parade, but when he saw how things were going, he went inside and hid behind a curtain. He had hoped that it would concentrate the minds of the foreign journalists and diplomats in the capital. He was amazed and infuriated by the apathy of the Berliners, which struck the journalists far more than the show of firepower on the roads. Goebbels either failed to notice, or he was taken in by his own propaganda; he observed, “Everywhere the most profound impression was made.”

The hawks paid no heed to the reservations expressed by the military men nonetheless. Himmler—who hoped to be able to replace the army by his own Waffen-SS—“complained about the generals. The Führer added his sharpest verdict on the old, senile army leaders. They should be laid off as soon as possible.” Not all of Himmler’s men agreed with Himmler, or Goebbels’s optimistic view of the Berliners. SS-Gruppenführer Lorenz told Ribbentrop, “If the Berliners knew how much you have been beating the drum for war, I’d have to position the entire Leibstandarte along the Wilhelmstrasse to protect you.” The last thing the people wanted was war. There was a bad harvest, which was compounded by an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. For the first time since Hitler came to power it was clear that the Germans were ready for change.

That same day Chamberlain made his never-forgotten speech on the wireless about a “faraway country,” reiterating his reluctance to fight. Czechoslovakia, it was clear, was not worth the bones of a British grenadier. The broadcast was not seen in the bad light it enjoys today, when it is perceived as an admission of indifference to the fate of Czechoslovakia. Groscurth thought, in contrast to Hitler, the British prime minister had been “calm and dignified.” Later, Admiral Raeder brought Hitler the news that the Royal Navy had been mobilized. The planned declaration of war against the Czechs was hurriedly retracted. Hitler fired off a letter to Chamberlain, leaving it up to him to make the Czech government see reason.

AS THE gloom of impending war hung like a pall over the capitals of Western and Central Europe, the French were first to attempt to lance the boil. François-Poncet arrived in the Chancellery at 11 AM. He found tables set for lunch for commanders designated to invade Czechoslovakia. He brought Hitler an offer that would allow partial occupation by the 1st and complete evacuation of the areas in question by the 10th: “Why should you take the risk when your essential demands can be met without war?”

Hitler was visibly moved by what the Frenchman said, but a little more pressure was required to make him desist. The British had decided to bring in Mussolini, who was as alarmed as anyone at the prospect of a European war. Hitler had kept the Duce in the dark; the proposed meeting between the two dictators at the Brenner had not taken place. Mussolini saw Chamberlain’s policy as the “liquidation of English prestige,” but both he and his son-in-law Ciano were convinced there would be war. Chamberlain also offered to fly for a fifth time, this time to Berlin.

At 10 AM, the British ambassador in Rome, Lord Perth, showed Ciano a telegram from Chamberlain. With four hours to go before the German armies went into Bohemia, Italian mediation was the last chance to save Europe. Mussolini dispatched his ambassador, the highly experienced, anti-Nazi Bernardo Attolico, who arrived on the heels of François-Poncet. Attolico was also a friend and confidant of Weizsäcker’s. The Italian asked for a twenty-four-hour stay of execution. Hitler was not impressed by the sight of the Italian diplomat, who arrived flushed and breathless, and told Linge, “He’s shitting himself! If we took his advice we’d never see the end of this business,” but he listened for all that.