The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (222 page)

The British press picked the story up. In less than a week the German embassy learned that the articles had been based on the P.M.’s remarks at Nancy Astor’s luncheon. Dirksen advised Berlin that Chamberlain would approve of the Sudetenland’s secession from Czechoslovakia, provided the wishes of the people were determined in a plebiscite “not interrupted by forcible measures on the part of Germany.”

Hitler had hesitated to threaten Czechoslovakia. The Anschluss, he knew, had been much simpler. Austria had lacked allies and a strong military presence; nor did she have a defensive position which, if forfeited, would undermine Anglo-French security. Because the Czechs had all these, deliberate provocation of a crisis would risk a general European war or a humiliating withdrawal. Everything would depend on speed. He needed a fait accompli, before sympathy for the underdog mounted in the democracies, where public opinion counted, and the Russians seized the opportunity to become a European power through intervention. Hitler had wanted reassurance before he took such risks. And now he had it—from Britain.

Although Chamberlain had eased Hitler’s doubts, the Führer had a backup plan. Colonel Malcolm Grahame Christie was an enigmatic figure similar to those found in Eric Ambler novels and Alfred Hitchcock films of the time. Educated in Germany and trained as an engineer, he had been a British fighter pilot in the last war and, afterward, an embassy attaché in Washington and Berlin, where he had become a friend of Göring. In 1930 he had retired from the RAF, ostensibly to become a businessman whose work required frequent trips to Germany. Actually, he was an intelligence officer gathering data on the Luftwaffe and the Reich’s military plans. Vansittart—kicked upstairs, but still serving the FO in an advisory role—was his control. When Van received a message from Henlein, asking for an interview, he asked Christie to make arrangements for him to visit London and return. If shown British resolve, Van reasoned, the Sudeten Germans might think twice before flouting Prague again. He seems not to have considered the possibility that Henlein, an ardent Nazi, might be acting on orders from Berlin.
¹⁸⁰

He was. On May 12, exactly two months after the Anschluss, he had stopped at Berlin on his way west, was admitted to the Foreign Ministry through a seldom-used door, and was ushered into the office of Baron von Weizsäcker, Ribbentrop’s under secretary, for his final instructions. Most important, said Weizsäcker, would be British questions suggesting, or assuming, that he had been briefed by anyone in the government of the Third Reich, such as, say, Weizsäcker. Great weight was attached to his meeting with Churchill. The Führer believed that either Churchill or Eden would head the next government in England. Lastly, and this was a matter of judgment, he was expected to determine the temper of the men now in office. Were they as weak and incompetent as they seemed? Or was it all a trap? The Führer, himself a builder of traps, often thought he saw them in other countries, always with himself as their purported victim.
¹⁸¹

Van minuted for the FO record afterward that as “it was impossible for members of the Government to see Herr Henlein lest some sort of negotiations be suspected, it was necessary to arrange that Herr Henlein should see not only myself but some persons of consequence in the House of Commons.” Here Churchill was indispensable. The visitor wanted to sample British opinion; a meeting with Winston might persuade him that the British lion could still roar. Churchill, told of the plan, agreed to give Henlein a lunch at Morpeth Mansions. “His visit is being kept a secret,” Winston wrote Archibald Sinclair. “His wish to come to London to see Van and a few others is a hopeful sign.” The other guests were Sinclair, Christie, and the Prof, who served as interpreter and took notes.
¹⁸²

Henlein’s theatrical talents were effective. They listened gravely, nodding in approval as he told them the excessive demands in his Karlsbad speech were not to be taken seriously; they were “bargaining points” from which he was “prepared to recede.” He felt he was entitled to embrace the Nazi ideology but not “to impose it on others.” Questioned over whether he might be used as a pawn in Hitler’s
Drang nach Osten
, he swore on his word of honor that he had never received orders, or even “recommendations” (“
Weisungen
”), from Berlin. Asked whether he had claimed a veto power in Czechoslovakia’s foreign policy, he vigorously denied it. Churchill wondered whether he realized that an incident in the Sudetenland “might easily set Europe alight”—that “if Germany marched,” for example, “France would come in and England would follow.”

Henlein replied that he had known that from the outset and had, in fact, avoided incitements, even when he “believed he was in the right.” Looking ahead, he saw three paths: “Autonomy within the Czech State,” a plebiscite which would probably lead to an Anschluss, and war. His followers, who were “impatient,” preferred an Anschluss. If Prague ignored their appeals, they would ask Europe’s great powers for a plebiscite “under international supervision.”
¹⁸³

Police, railway, and postal workers in the Sudetenland would be required to speak German and the Sudeten Germans would be entitled to their own town and county governments, but “the frontier fortresses could be manned by Czech troops, who would, of course, have unhindered access thereto.” As he left—not for his homeland, as his hosts assumed, but for Berchtesgaden, where he would report to Hitler—one of the others called out: “We hope you’re not another Seyss-Inquart!” Over his shoulder he called back: “No chance of that!” Churchill immediately laid Henlein’s terms before Jan Masaryk, who, as Winston later noted in his memoirs, “professed himself contented with a settlement on these lines.” On May 16, three days after his luncheon for Henlein, Churchill told an audience in Bristol that he saw “no reason why the Sudetendeutsche should not become trusted and honored partners in what is, after all, the most progressive and democratic of the new States of Europe.”
¹⁸⁴

Weizsäcker’s coaching of Henlein—exploiting Britain’s traditional championing of fair play—had been brilliant. The issue in Czechoslovakia had previously been depicted simply, as an unequal struggle in which the huge Reich was intimidating a plucky but outgunned neighbor. Now there was concern over a minority whose rights were being ignored or trammeled by insensitive Prague. In the Berghof, Henlein told Hitler that “no serious intervention in favor of the Czechs was to be feared from England or probably from France.”
¹⁸⁵

The lunch in Morpeth Mansions had been on Friday, May 13, and Churchill had spoken in support of Henlein on the following Monday. Now, on Wednesday, a Leipzig newspaper published an account of Wehrmacht assault divisions moving into position on the Czech frontier. Thursday the British consulate in Dresden reported that there was “strong reason to believe that German troops are concentrating in southern Silesia and northern Austria.” Later in the day a similar report arrived from Bavaria, together with a cable from Henderson adding: “My French colleague has also heard rumors of concentration of troops on the [Czech] frontier.” The following day Krofta, alarmed, phoned Ernst Eisenlohr, the German minister in Prague, to protest; on his desk were several reports, each confirming the others, of heavy German troop concentrations in Saxony. Thus the stage was set for the May crisis.
¹⁸⁶

Czech municipal elections were to be held on Sunday. Since Henlein’s return the Sudetenland had been chaotic. Gangs of Sudetendeutsche youths wearing swastika brassards had attacked neighbors of Slavic descent, marched through streets carrying torches, and held rallies which culminated in chants of “
Sieg Heil!
” and “
Wir wollen heim ins Reich!
” (“We want to go home to the Reich!”). Goebbels, meantime, had stepped up his denunciation of “Czech terror.” The parallels with Austria were unmistakable. Any incident might touch off an invasion, and Friday, May 20, one made to order occurred when two Sudeten German motorcyclists were shot dead after ignoring a Czech policeman’s whistle. After an emergency cabinet meeting in Hradschin Palace, President Beneš approved an urgent recommendation of the Czech General Staff, calling up reservists and specialist troops to man the Sudetenland garrisons.

In Berlin Ribbentrop heatedly denied hostile Wehrmacht concentrations, but when Eisenlohr and his military attaché called on General Ludvik Krejcí, the Czech chief of staff, they were shown an impressive collection of what he called “irrefutable evidence that in Saxony a concentration of from eight to ten divisions has taken place,” with another twelve on the Czech frontier “ready to march within twelve hours.” All the pieces of what had seemed a puzzle were falling into place. Krejcí’s army believed it could hold the Wehrmacht in check long enough for France, Britain, and the Russians to intervene, provided its fortress line was manned and ready. The country would, however, be particularly vulnerable to a surprise attack by Nazi forces assembled and deployed under what Beneš’s General Staff called “the guise of training purposes.”
¹⁸⁷

“Training” was indeed the explanation the German high command (OKW) gave Weizsäcker, who passed it on to a skeptical world. But for once it was true. The Wehrmacht wasn’t ready. A scrupulous examination of OKW and German foreign policy documents at Nuremberg after the war revealed that there had been no aggressive concentrations in Silesia or Austria that May. The OKW’s statement that the Nazi troops along the Czech border were assembled for “peacetime maneuvers” was accurate. To foreigners the number of German soldiers near the frontier would have been disquieting, but such numbers could be seen nearly anywhere in the Reich. Germany had become a highly militarized nation; its economy was on a war footing. Hitler did intend to invade Beneš’s country. And these were the soldiers who would form the point of his spearhead. But not yet.

In the spring of 1938, however, the truth was unknown. In Paris and London the men responsible for crucial decisions had every reason to believe that Hitler might be poised to unleash another bolt of lightning from his aerie above Berchtesgaden. Daladier staked out the French position by inviting the German ambassador to his home and speaking “frankly as a French ex-serviceman to his German comrade,” warning him that should Hitler invade Czechoslovakia “the French would have to fight as they did not wish to be dishonored,” and that the result could be the utter destruction of European civilization. Halifax, out of character but acting in the finest tradition of British diplomacy, sent the unhappy Henderson to the Wilhelmstrasse twice with personal messages from him to Ribbentrop. In the first he declared that “His Majesty’s Government could not guarantee that they would not be forced by circumstances to become involved” if France, following her treaty obligations, intervened. The second note warned that if the Nazis resorted to force, “it is quite impossible for me to foretell results that might follow, and I would beg him not to count on this country being able to stand aside.”
¹⁸⁸

Now there was no way Germany could avoid an enormous loss of face. Because the Wehrmacht was unprepared, Hitler could not attack, and since he did not, the Allies concluded that he had backed down. That was Churchill’s interpretation. The Czechs, he wrote in the
Daily Telegraph
of June 23, had seemed doomed “to be swallowed whole by Berlin and reduced to shapeless pulp by the close-grinding mandibles of the Gestapo.” Now Hitler knew Czechoslovakia would not “be left to struggle week after week against an avalanche of fire and steel.”

Churchill thought the incident a triumph for England, but His Majesty’s Government did not see it that way. For men who had presumably won a victory of diplomacy, they took no heart from it. In fact, they were badly frightened. Still convinced that the Germans had been intent on military action, they thought of the peril they had skirted and mopped their brows. Chamberlain wrote his sisters: “The more I hear about last weekend, the more I feel what a damned close run thing it was.” In another letter to them, he wrote, “The Germans, who are bullies by nature, are too conscious of their strength and our weakness, and until we are as strong as they are” (which, if his defense policies were unaltered, would be never) “we shall always be kept in a state of chronic anxiety.” After reviewing the cable traffic, Halifax and Cadogan vowed never again to approach the brink and, accordingly, sent Paris a telegram warning the French not to be “under any illusion” about the possibility of British help “against German aggression.”
¹⁸⁹

The May crisis had arisen from a misunderstanding; if the Führer had been a sane man, he would have counted himself lucky to be out of it. Hitler, not sane, personifying the underside of the Teutonic character and four horrible years which had ended in the defeat, not just of Germany, but of
him
, saw a wrong crying for redemption. The fact that he had been planning the invasion of Czechoslovakia—that the only real misunderstanding in May had been over timing—somehow made it worse. “Injustice is relatively easy to bear,” wrote Mencken. “What stings is justice.” On May 28 the Führer suddenly appeared in Berlin and summoned the hierarchies of the OKW, the party, and the government to the chancellery. His voice still choking with rage, he said that the Sudeten question would be solved “once and for all, and radically.” Preparations for military action must be completed by October 2, the Siegfried Line would be extended by workers toiling around the clock, and ninety-six divisions were mobilized immediately. The execution of
Fall Grün
“must be assured by October 1, 1938, at the latest.” In his hoarse, staccato delivery, his voice sounding like a bearing about to go, he roared: “
Es ist mein unerschütterlicher Wille, die Tschechoslowakei von der Landkarte auszulöschen!
” (“It is my unshakable will to wipe Czechoslovakia off the map!”).
¹⁹⁰

Churchill, unaware of Hitler’s resolution, shared a fresh sense of relief with his
Daily Telegraph
readers on July 6. The Anschluss, he had decided on reflection, was not the Nazi triumph it had seemed to be. At the time, he recalled, he had told Parliament that