The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (226 page)

At Chartwell, Winston was writing A. H. Richards, general secretary of the Anti-Nazi Council, “If, as I fear, the Government is going to let Czechoslovakia be cut to pieces, it seems to me that a period of very hard work lies before us all.” Hard work lay ahead for Chamberlain, too. The betrayal of a nation requires just as much paperwork, conferring, and arguing over obscure points as its salvation. But the prime minister believed that
he
was the savior. He asked for, and was given, Hitler’s promise that Germany would launch no attack until they had held a second summit sometime in the next few days. Departing Berchtesgaden, Chamberlain later wrote Ida, he felt he had “established a certain confidence, which was my aim, and, on my side, in spite of the hardness and ruthlessness I thought I saw in his face, I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word.”
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In London on September 17 Chamberlain described Hitler to the cabinet as “the commonest little dog,” and a “most extraordinary creature,” but repeated his conviction that he would be “rather better than his word,” adding that he had been told (presumably by Henderson) that the Führer had been “most favourably impressed.” This, he said, was “of the utmost importance, since the future conduct of these negotiations depends mainly upon personal contacts.” Hitler had assured him, he emphasized, that he wanted “no Czechs in the Reich”; he would be satisfied once he had included the Sudeten Germans. “The impression left on me was that Herr Hitler meant what he had said…. My view is that Herr Hitler is telling the truth.”
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Having given this testimonial to the Führer, the P.M. assumed that his ministers would approve of ceding the Sudetenland to the Reich. To his surprise and dismay, several declined endorsing the German claim pending further discussion. In Paris there was also what Phipps described as “considerable heart-burning.” Léon Blum wrote in
Le Populaire
that war would probably be avoided, but “under such circumstances that I, who for many years dedicated my life to [the struggle for peace], cannot feel joy. I feel myself torn between a sense of cowardly relief and shame.”
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Churchill’s feelings were unmixed; he was outraged. He sent his agent, Revesz, a statement for distribution to the European press. “The personal intervention of Mr Chamberlain and his flight to see Herr Hitler,” he wrote, “does not at all alter the gravity of the issue at stake. We must hope that it does not foreshadow another complete failure of the Western Democracies to withstand the threats and violence of Nazi Germany.” Phipps reported to Halifax that Churchill had telephoned the Quai d’Orsay, noting caustically that Winston “presumably… breathed fire and thunder in order to binge Bonnet up.”
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But France was already committed to the Chamberlain solution. A delegation headed by Daladier and Bonnet reached Whitehall on September 18. The French premier’s chief concern was to avoid the proposal of a plebiscite, “a weapon with which the German Government could keep Central Europe in a constant state of alarm and suspense.” Chamberlain assured him that he had discarded that possibility—he knew Hitler would reject it since if the polling was supervised, he might lose. Yet the French were still uneasy; they could not walk away from their treaty with the Czechs. They wanted the British to join them in guaranteeing the borders of the mangled Czechoslovakia that the cession would leave. Chamberlain and Halifax tried to avoid that, but after nearly three hours of discussion they yielded, the P.M. taking consolation in Hitler’s Berghof assurance that he was solely interested in the Sudeten Germans. The issue was absurd. If England had been unwilling to fight for a defensible Czechoslovakia, why should she agree to rush to the aid of the indefensible remnant? Beneš saw that; when the Anglo-French proposal was presented to him by Basil Newton, he rejected it, on the ground, reported Newton, that “guarantees which he already possessed had proved valueless.”
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The Times
, on September 20, in massive understatement, observed that the Anglo-French proposal, giving Hitler what he would otherwise have found very expensive, “could not, in the nature of things, be expected to make a strong
prima facie
appeal to the Czech Government, and least of all to President Beneš.” It didn’t, and at 8:00
P.M.
on the twentieth the Czech government refused to agree to the annexation of its sovereign territory, explaining that as leaders of a democracy they could not make such an enormous decision without the approval of their parliament. Furthermore, they declared, submission to the Führer’s demands would not solve the “question of peace” because they would face minority unrest elsewhere in their country. Lastly, Europe’s “balance of power would be destroyed.”
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This was one of those mysterious historical moments in which events acquire a momentum all their own and begin to exert an irresistible pressure. There was no reason to hurry; Ribbentrop told Paris, London, and Prague that the Führer could wait, and at his suggestion the next Hitler-Chamberlain meeting was postponed from Wednesday, September 21, to Thursday. Nevertheless, Phipps suggested to Bonnet that they tell Beneš that unless his reply constituted a complete, immediate acceptance of what amounted to an Allied ultimatum, England and France would “wash their hands of Czechoslovakia in the event of a German attack.”
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In Prague the British minister, Newton, advised Whitehall that if he could deliver an “ultimatum to President Beneš,” then “he and his Government will feel able to bow to a
force majeure
.” That, more or less, is what happened. At 2:00
A.M.
on the twenty-first Newton and his French counterpart, Victor de Lacroix, delivered a demarche informing Beneš that surrender of the Sudetenland to the Reich was “the only means of averting war and the invasion of Czechoslovakia,” and that if he persisted in refusing it he would “bear the responsibility for the war,” which would divide France and England, because the English would declare themselves neutral. British neutrality meant further that when “war starts, France will not take part, i.e. she will not fulfill her treaty obligations.” They argued with the old man for an hour and a half; then he threw in his hand. Jan Masaryk sent the text of the Anglo-French ultimatum to Hugh Dalton, a Labour MP and a Churchill ally. When Dalton read it in the House of Commons, Sir Samuel Hoare solemnly replied that it was “in almost every respect a totally inaccurate description of the representations that we made to the Czechoslovak Government.” Among the signs of moral disintegration in Chamberlain’s clique was the adoption, by Hitler’s British admirers, of the Big Lie.
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Roosevelt, summoning the British ambassador in Washington, told him that the Anglo-French proposal was “the most terrible remorseless sacrifice that has ever been demanded of a State” and predicted that it would “provoke a highly unfavorable reaction in America.” The president again suggested a conference of world leaders—not in Europe, but in the Azores or some other Atlantic island—which he would attend. Roosevelt’s proposal was swept from the prime minister’s desk into his wastebasket.
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The P.M. was equally unresponsive to FDR’s humanitarian appeal for the Czechs who would be dispossessed and were already well into the early stages of panic. The Sudetenland’s anti-Nazis were hopelessly trapped. Wednesday evening Wenzel Jaksch, the leader of Czechoslovakia’s 400,000 German Social Democrats, told John Troutbeck, the first secretary of the British embassy in Prague, that his followers had nowhere to go; the Czechs, overwhelmed by the mass of Sudeten refugees of their own race, were turning Sudeten Germans away. Therefore, Jaksch told Troutbeck, they “must lay their lives in the hands of the British and French Governments and ask for advice as to what was to be done for them.” But the Allied embassies were mute. It was Vienna all over again. Jaksch’s followers applied for British and French visas and were rejected. They returned to their homes to await the Gestapo, which would not keep them waiting long.
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Churchill had been active from the beginning of the crisis, using every weapon he could lay hands on to subvert Chamberlain. He tried to work behind the scenes, but in a nation with a free press, that was impossible; on Tuesday September 6, to his chagrin, the
Daily Express
had reported that Heinrich Brüning, the former Weimar chancellor, had visited Chartwell, asking his host to urge His Majesty’s Government to “speak plainly to Hitler.” After
The Times
ran its disastrous editorial of September 7 proposing a partition of Czechoslovakia, Winston had repeatedly called on Halifax, trying to find out what was happening and then to influence policy. On Thursday, September 15, when Chamberlain departed for Berchtesgaden, Winston devoted his
Daily Telegraph
column to the Czechs.
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He bitterly rued his resignation, on a matter of principle, from the Conservative party’s hierarchy in 1931. Like his father, who had surrendered his seals as chancellor of the Exchequer fifty years earlier on another issue, he had been ostracized ever since. Now he was alarmed by news that two strong members of Daladier’s cabinet, Paul Reynaud and Georges Mandel, planned to quit their offices unless France honored her pledges to the Czechs. Churchill had immediately flown over on September 20 to point out that if they quit they would forfeit their roles as shapers of another, more rational foreign policy. Either the force of his argument, his powerful presence, or his position as Hitler’s greatest enemy in Europe—or perhaps all three—brought them round. They agreed to stick it out.
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His plane brought him back on September 21. Upon returning to Morpeth Mansions he issued a statement denouncing plans to balkanize Czechoslovakia. Partition, he said, would amount “to the complete surrender of the Western democracies to the Nazi threat of force,” putting England and France in an “ever weaker and more dangerous situation.” A neutral Czechoslovakia would free at least twenty-five German divisions to threaten France and the Low Countries while opening up “for the triumphant Nazis the road to the Black Sea.” It was “not Czechoslovakia alone which is menaced,” he said, “but also the freedom and the democracy of all nations.” The conviction that security could be bought “by throwing a small State to the wolves” was “a fatal delusion.”
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On the twenty-second Chamberlain was on his way to his second airplane trip, with Dawson again alongside to see him off. At Heston Airport the prime minister was irritated by the presence of a small group which had gathered there, not to wish him well, but to boo. The German crowds were friendlier. The second summit was to be held in the small town of Godesberg, on the Rhine, and at the Petersberg Hotel elegant suites overlooking the river had been reserved for
die Engländer
—the P.M. and his small entourage, which included two British diplomats who had met his plane: Ambassador Henderson and Ivone Kirkpatrick. All that the German people knew of Chamberlain was that he was trying to preserve the peace, but it was enough; they had brought a band, and standing beneath his windows they serenaded him with the rollicking London hit:

Even as the P.M., Kirkpatrick, and Henderson crossed the Rhine for talks with Hitler in the Hotel Dreesen, Churchill, having left Downing Street, was hailing a cab for 11 Morpeth Mansions. He had called at No. 10 to ask precisely what Chamberlain would propose at Godesberg, and five peers along with three MPs—Bracken, Sinclair, and Nicolson—were gathering in his flat to hear what he had learned. Nicolson, the last to arrive, was waiting for the lift when Winston paid the cabbie and hurried in. As they ascended together, Nicolson said: “This is hell.” Churchill muttered: “It is the end of the British Empire.” According to Nicolson’s diary, Churchill told the group that the cabinet had demanded “a firm stand” on Chamberlain’s part, insisting on German demobilization, supervision of the Sudetenland transfer by an international commission, a refusal to discuss Polish or Hungarian claims on Czech territory, and a German guarantee of the new Czech borders. Almost in chorus, his guests said: “But Hitler will never accept such terms!” Winston replied, “In that case, Chamberlain will return tonight and we shall have war.” In that event, one peer pointed out, “It will be inconvenient having our Prime Minister in German territory.” Winston shook his massive head and growled, “Even the Germans would not be so stupid as to deprive us of our beloved Prime Minister.”
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Hitler neither accepted nor rejected the cabinet’s terms, because Chamberlain never gave them to him. He never had a chance. Expecting to please the Führer, he told him of the Anglo-French agreement to the Sudeten annexation. To his dismay, Hitler replied brusquely, “
Ja, es tut mir leid, aber das geht nicht mehr
” (“Yes, I am very sorry, but that is no longer possible”). He had decided to raise the stakes, indifferent to the outcome; war was his objective, and this old man was obstructing that. The Führer now said he thought Warsaw and Budapest were right in advancing claims on Czech territory, and peace could “not be firmly established until these claims had been settled.” Furthermore, the Sudetenland problem must be completely solved by October 1—there would be no time to adhere to the idea of self-determination. The Führer produced a marked map defining the area which must be occupied at once by German troops. Chamberlain, Kirkpatrick’s notes recorded, professed himself “disappointed and puzzled.” He had, he told Hitler, “risked his whole political career” to obtain his cabinet’s approval of the principles agreed to at Berchtesgaden. After three hours of inconclusive and, as Chamberlain reported by telephone to London that night, “most unsatisfactory” talks, the meeting was adjourned, to be resumed the next day.
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