The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (217 page)

Churchill had long foreseen a jeopardized Czechoslovakia should a vindictive, rearmed Germany emerge in central Europe. As early as February 13, 1925, he had urged a redrawing of national borders in eastern Europe, contending that “real peace” would be elusive as long as regions with large German populations lay outside Germany’s borders, only to be told that any change in frontiers would mean “tearing up” the Versailles treaty. On March 31, 1931—two years before Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor—he told readers of the Hearst papers that Tomáš Masaryk, the country’s first president, and Beneš had “refounded an ancient nation…. They have established a strong state on the broad basis of social democracy and anti-communism.” But if Germany and Austria were reunited, “Czechoslovakia would lie in dire peril.”
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The more Hitler pondered Czechoslovakia, the more he concluded that its very existence was an affront to him. Its birth at Versailles was enough to condemn it. Moreover, it lacked ethnic integrity; Hungarians, Ruthenians, Slovaks, Germans, and Czechs had all been spliced into the ancient Kingdom of Bohemia, and, if that weren’t enough, the splicers had been Masaryk and Beneš, both intellectuals and believers in democracy. These men had then committed the ultimate sin in the Führer’s eyes: they had transformed their country into the most prosperous, progressive, and enlightened nation in eastern Europe.

Until 1938 neither Hitler nor Henlein contemplated outright annexation. Most Sudeteners—about 18 percent of the country’s fifteen million people—had intermarried with Czechs of other ethnic stock. Henlein could not speak for them; indeed, thousands of them were refugees from the Reich he admired, and thousands of others thanked God they didn’t live under the hakenkreuz. Nevertheless, the Führer had concluded that the SDP had a future and he would invest in it. Beginning in 1935 the Sudeten party received fifteen thousand marks a month from the Wilhelmstrasse.

On May 19, 1935, the SDP had shown astonishing strength at the polls, winning 1,250,000 votes, three out of every five German votes cast, making it the second largest party in the national parliament. In the House of Commons Churchill called this demonstration of support “a very considerable fact, having regard to the energy which the German people, when inspired by the Nazi spirit, are able to exercise.” It was, he said, one of several alarms set off by the success of the German dictatorship; “not only [was] the supreme question of self-preservation” involved, “but also the human and the world cause of the preservation of free Governments and of Western civilisation against the ever-advancing forces of authority and despotism.”
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There was cause for alarm: by the summer of 1936 Nazi parties had appeared in Poland, the Baltic States, and the Free City of Danzig, where men wearing the swastika in their lapels held all key positions in the government. On July 21 Churchill wrote Lord Rothermere: “My information tallies with yours, that Czecho-Slovakia will soon be in the news.” It was; the Czechs were rapidly rearming and building a powerful line of fortifications along the German frontier. Goebbels accused them of letting the Russians build military airfields on their soil, opening a campaign of denunciation and recrimination resembling his attacks on the Austrian government on the eve of Chancellor Dollfuss’s murder. On February 5, 1937, Churchill wrote in the
Evening Standard
that “at any moment a quarrel may be picked with [the Czechs] by a mighty neighbor. Already they see the directions given in the regimented German press to write them down, to accuse them of being Communists, and, in particular, of preparing their airports for a Russian assault upon Germany. Vain to protest their innocence, vain to offer every facility for German or neutral inspection of their arrangements.”
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In June 1937 Winston received a long report from one of his most reliable informants, Sheila Grant Duff, a cousin of Clemmie’s and an Oxford graduate who was living in Prague. Western Czechoslovakia, she wrote, was kept in constant turmoil by gangs of Sudeten Germans who roamed the streets at night, clubbing Jews, looting their shops, and desecrating synagogues. She cited two of Henlein’s Nazis, who claimed they had been ill-treated by Czech policemen: “This could be used to launch the ‘
Gegenmassnahmen’
[countermeasures] which the German press has threatened.” Sheila was worried about the future of the Czech state. She implored Winston to “do everything in your power to make our attitude firm and unfaltering. The crisis has never been so great and I am convinced that only a stand on our part can overcome it. Czechoslovakia is, for the moment, almost entirely dependent on us.” Writing in October to Lord Londonderry—who continued to believe that Anglo-Nazi friendship was possible—Winston pointed out that any arrangement with the Germans would entail giving them a “free hand so far as we are concerned in Central and Southern Europe. This means that they would devour Austria and Czecho-Slovakia as a preliminary to making a gigantic middle Europe-block. It would certainly not be in our interests to connive at such policies of aggression.”
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The Chamberlain government, however, clearly agreed with Lord Londonderry, and continued to refuse to allocate adequate funds for defense. In February 1938, the secretary for air, Lord Swinton, having been blocked in his earlier proposals, again submitted an RAF budget, this one representing “the minimum for security.” Attempts to match the Luftwaffe’s overwhelming superiority in fighter planes were abandoned; the RAF would settle for enough aircraft to meet German “bombers that could be used against this country.” Inskip said that would be too expensive. He proposed cutting back not only Britain’s first-line air strength but also the reserve. Halifax, supporting him, stressed “every possible effort to get on good terms with Germany,” which, as a code phrase of the time, meant refraining from war preparations which might arouse the Führer’s wrath. Summing up the discussion, Chamberlain told his ministers what they already knew—that he attached “great importance to… the maintenance of our economic stability.” Despite Swinton’s appeal for a swift decision, the record shows that “no final decision was reached on policy for expansion of the Air Force.” Action on the Admiralty budget was also deferred for a year.
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Meanwhile, the Czechoslovakian bomb continued to tick. One of Churchill’s sources, traveling through eastern Europe, sent Chartwell an appraisal underscoring the determination of small countries not “to provoke Germany,” while the Germans themselves “are convinced that we would be neutral if they attacked Czechoslovakia.” The Czechoslovakian mood was described as “desperate.” In Prague, Beneš reflected bitterly on a Versailles misjudgment, the drawing of his country’s frontiers. The Sudeten Mountains, which he had fortified to repel a German attack, were an integral part of the very region inhabited by Henlein’s Teutonic constituents. If they were annexed by Hitler, those strongholds would become part of the Reich, leaving the rest of Czechoslovakia defenseless.
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The tumultuous events in Vienna in March set off huge demonstrations in the Sudetenland, irresponsible talk of “going home to the Reich,” and heightened harassment, including Sudetendeutsche clubbing of Czechs living along the German border. At Eger twenty-five thousand Sudetendeutsche demonstrated as church bells pealed; at Saaz fifteen thousand paraded down streets chanting, “
Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!
” Until now the Germans had enjoyed prosperity and peace in Czechoslovakia, but the Führer would tell the world that they were martyrs, that they were “subjected to unspeakable suffering at the hands of Prague sadists because Aryan blood coursed through their veins.” And decent Englishmen in public life, including a decent prime minister and his decent cabinet, would hesitate to challenge this absurd indictment because open disbelief would “provoke” Hitler. In reality, Hitler needed no provocation. He now meant to destroy the Czech state and incorporate it into the Reich.
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Immediately after Churchill’s proposal for a Grand Alliance, Cadogan had discussed it with Chamberlain and Halifax, and had left with the impression that they were giving it serious consideration. He disagreed, and his report to the FO reflected it. His position was not, however, acceptable to his colleagues, among them his assistant under secretary, Sir Orme Sargent, a protégé of Vansittart. In a memorandum to Cadogan, Sargent saw the Anschluss as the first step in a Nazi “policy of expansion” which would reduce “all the weak and disorganized countries of the Danubian basin… to a position, both politically and economically, of vassal states.”
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It became the task of William Strang, Ralph Wigram’s successor as head of the FO’s Central Department, to sort it all out. Strang proposed three possible courses of action, ending with a wretched alternative, “a negative one,” in his words, “not advanced on its own positive merits,” but on the assumption that England was too weak to make any other response. In that event, Britain should “try to persuade France and Czechoslovakia that the best course would be for the latter to make the best terms she can with Germany while she can perhaps still do so in more favorable conditions than would obtain later.”
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That was the option Cadogan found most appealing. He recommended that Britain make no commitment to support France in fulfilling her pledge to join the Czechs if they were attacked. In his diary that night, March 16, he wrote: “I shall be called ‘cowardly’ but after days and nights of thinking, I have come to the conclusion that it is the least bad. We
must
not precipitate a conflict now—we shall be smashed…. That is the policy of the line of least resistance, which the Cabinet will probably take.” He was right. After Churchill’s speech Chamberlain wrote his sister Ida that “the plan of the ‘Grand Alliance,’ as Winston calls it, had occurred to me long before he mentioned it…. I talked about it to Halifax.” They had found it “a very attractive idea,” he continued; “indeed, there is almost everything to be said for it until you come to examine its practicability. From that moment its attraction vanishes. You have only to look at the map to see that nothing that France or we could do could possibly save Czechoslovakia from being overrun by the Germans.” He had reached the conclusion that “we could not help Czechoslovakia—she would simply be a pretext for going to war with Germany.” But he intended to remain flexible. Should the Sudeten Germans agree to a sensible solution, he was “not sure that in such circumstances I might not be willing to join in some joint guarantee with Germany of Czech independence.” Here, surely, was foreign policy with a clogged drain. Chamberlain refused to join France in defending the integrity of Czechoslovakia, but he might sign on with the Nazis. In Berlin, Henderson spoke as though a Nazi-British alliance were already a reality. He openly referred to “those blasted Czechs,” and, when a diplomat on his staff began a dispatch to the Foreign Office, “There is no such thing as Czechoslovakia,” made a marginal note agreeing that this was “largely true.”
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The Times
urged the Czechs to negotiate with Hitler; Czech stubbornness, it declared, could lead to war.
The Times
also reported a speech by Alan Lennox-Boyd, one of Winston’s personal friends, who had told an audience in Biggleswade that Hitler could “absorb Czechoslovakia and Great Britain would remain secure.” Boothby sent Churchill a cutting of this story and called it “an incitement to Germany to get on with the job.”
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Even as Lennox-Boyd spoke, Churchill flung down his own gauntlet in the
Evening Standard
. Obviously, he wrote, Prague must make every effort to provide its Germanic minority with “every form of good treatment and equal citizenship, not incompatible with the safety of the State,” but he had every reason to believe that this was being done already. The real danger, as he saw it, was that the Germans might create incidents and use them to justify an invasion of Czechoslovakia. He therefore welcomed the French reassurance that France would keep her word and fulfill treaty obligations to support the Czechs if they were victims of an unprovoked attack. He added: “A further declaration of the intentions of the British Government in such an event must be made.”
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Thus, at the inner cabinet meeting of March 18, the government faced two Churchillian challenges: his call for a Grand Alliance and a demand that the government join France in a defensive alliance with Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain had asked the military Chiefs of Staff whether they were ready for war. He knew the answer; though his rearmament record was better than Baldwin’s, it could hardly be compared to Hitler’s. Production of the Hawker Hurricanes had begun five months earlier; the gull-winged Spitfire, now being redesigned to accommodate four additional machine guns (for a total of eight), had followed. Both were superior to the Luftwaffe’s best fighters, but tightfisted budgets meant only a handful could be put in the sky now. Therefore, the Air Ministry’s reply to the prime minister concluded that the RAF “cannot at the present time be said to be in any way fit to undertake operations on a major war scale.” The Admiralty and the War Office agreed that Britain was “at a stage of rearmament when we are not ready for war.” After these précis had been reviewed by the inner cabinet, according to the minutes summarizing the meeting, Halifax said they demonstrated “conclusively” that it “behooved us to take every step that we could and to use every argument that we could think of to dissuade France from going to the aid of Czechoslovakia.”
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But this argument was specious in itself. The questions the P.M. had put to the chiefs had been highly selective, and minority reports had been suppressed. For example, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, who headed the RAF’s Fighter Command and would lead it during the Battle of Britain, believed that the speed and high rate of climb which marked Britain’s new fighters, combined with the chain of radar towers now rising along England’s southeast shores, demonstrated that hostile bombers could be intercepted in clear weather, when 60 percent of enemy raids could be expected. Radar also meant that continuous fighter patrols could be discontinued, and radar accuracy was improving every day.