Goering (28 page)

There were many indications that Chamberlain wanted the matter settled at the expense of the Czechs; there were even signs that Britain was becoming angry with Czechoslovakia. “The moment has come for Prague to get a real twist of the screw,” wrote Henderson to Halifax in July. Chamberlain felt that Britain should mediate and get the matter settled once and for all by diplomatic means. Meanwhile, the anti-Hitler movement in Germany was trying through its spokesmen in London to persuade the British to stand up to Hitler, and had even given Halifax knowledge of Hitler's plans and the existence of the generals' plot in Germany to overthrow him should he order an attack on Czechoslovakia. But the British had by now decided to put pressure on Czechoslovakia's President, Eduard BeneÅ¡, rather than on Hitler, and Chamberlain instructed Henderson to let Hitler know that he was ready to visit Germany and act between him and BeneÅ¡.

The war tension in Europe grew. Everyone waited for the sullen man from Berchtesgaden to speak his mind at Nuremberg, where the party was due to assemble for its annual week of speeches and celebrations on September 6. The words so much feared were first uttered by Goering on September 10 when he spoke of the Czechs as “this miserable, pygmy race” and their country as “a petty segment of Europe.” They were, he shouted, “oppressing a cultured people,” and behind them lay “Moscow and the eternal mask of the Jew devil.” In Czechoslovakia gas masks were distributed, and the Jews began hastily to leave the country. On September 12 Hitler roared his hatred of his neighbor, but issued no ultimatum. A revolt in the Sudeten area had to be suppressed by force; the French, fearful of having to fulfill their obligations to help the Czechs, now begged Chamberlain to intervene, and to Hitler's astonishment he was informed on September 13 that the British Prime Minister would fly (for the first time in his life) to Germany in order to examine with Hitler “far-reaching German proposals . . . take part in carrying them out, and . . . advocate them in public.”

This was the Führer's chance. Everyone in Germany except Hitler himself was dubious of the success war might bring to Germany; even Goering, according to a dispatch from the British embassy dated September 11, did not “regard Germany's prospects in a general war too optimistically.” Chamberlain's gesture to Hitler at the same time revealed Britain's hidden hand. The relief was intense everywhere, except in Prague, and not least at Berchtesgaden itself. Hitler smiled.

Goering was at Berchtesgaden when Hitler received Chamberlain on September 15, and he did not mind at all when Chamberlain's desire to speak to Hitler alone, except for the interpreter Schmidt, led to the exclusion of Ribbentrop along with himself from the first conference. Ribbentrop's revenge was to refuse to let Chamberlain have a copy of Schmidt's notes on the three-hour conversation. Chamberlain won nothing from Hitler but a brief period of waiting while he returned to London to consult his colleagues about the proposed secession of the Sudeten region from Czechoslovakia on the basis of the right of self-determination. “I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word,” said Chamberlain.

On September 17 Henderson went to Carinhall and found Goering “still unwell.” Henderson begged Goering to intervene with Hitler and keep him from the precipitate action that Ribbentrop would no doubt encourage. Goering talked loosely about the bad effects of any “catastrophic” action in Czechoslovakia; otherwise he was sure Hitler would now behave with restraint, though he agreed about Ribbentrop. Goering remained “deliberate and restrained in his language” and later spoke in a “very admiring and respectful manner” of Chamberlain.

Meanwhile Hitler continued with preparations for war within three weeks and brusquely urged both the Poles and the Hungarians to lay parallel claims in the name of their minorities to assure the total dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. They did so on September 21 and 22. In the files of the German Foreign Ministry there is a memorandum on a conversation that had taken place between Goering and Hungarian Minister Sztójy at Carinhall on September 16. Goering had urged that Hungary was not “doing enough in the present crisis”; the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia was far too silent, and the government was not demanding, as it should have been, the restoration of the Czech areas to Hungary. He also assured the minister that Yugoslavia would take no action if Hungary joined in any conflict with Czechoslovakia on the third or fourth day after any action initiated by Germany.
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On September 19 Lord Runciman presented to BeneÅ¡ the British and French proposals that the Sudetenland be handed over to Germany without even holding a plebiscite, in return for which Britain and France would guarantee the new Czech frontiers against unprovoked aggression; an answer to the proposals was required by September 22, when Chamberlain was due to see Hitler for the second time. BeneÅ¡ refused. Extreme pressure was brought to bear once more; Britain and France, their governments declared, would withdraw all help if BeneÅ¡ did not accept these terms. On September 21 BeneÅ¡ capitulated; he had, he said, been “basely betrayed.”

Chamberlain returned to Germany and met Hitler at Godesberg on September 22, in the hotel from which Hitler had planned the final stages of his campaign against Roehm. The Prime Minister was appalled to find that Hitler was now no longer satisfied with the Czech capitulation; he demanded immediate military occupation of the Sudetenland by his forces. Hitler did not want capitulation, he wanted the destruction of Czechoslovakia. A military occupation of the Sudetenland would humiliate Beneš and demonstrate his own strength in Europe. Chamberlain, angry, worried and grieved, but still ready to act as mediator, retired to his hotel on the opposite bank of the Rhine. Notes were exchanged across the river between the two hotels, while the world's press grew hungry for hard news. Finally Chamberlain and Hitler met with their advisers in the middle of the night, over the memorandum which Hitler had produced in response to Chamberlain's request, and which the latter felt was an ultimatum to Czechoslovakia. No, said Hitler, not an ultimatum, a memorandum, and, as a simulated concession to Chamberlain, he altered the date of the occupation from September 26 to October 1, the date he had always had in mind. Ribbentrop, but not Goering, was present at this meeting. While Chamberlain flew back to London, Henderson in deep depression knelt in the vast emptiness of Cologne Cathedral and prayed for peace.

In the matter of Czechoslovakia, Goering, along with the generals whom Hitler despised, was on the side of moderation. In taking this position he sacrificed to some extent the warmth of his relationship with the Führer to his rival Ribbentrop, who, new to the experience of power, took every cue from Hitler in order to retain his master's favor. In the current situation, it was a matter of who dared to bluff longest, and Hitler had most to gain by bluffing and the right temperament to play the game. When he learned that the Godesberg ultimatum was rejected not only by Prague but also by the cabinets of France and Britain, he delivered a wild, violent, uncontrolled speech against BeneÅ¡ at the Sportpalast on September 26, claiming he would have the Sudetenland at any cost by October 1. He went to the limit in challenging the timidity of Britain and France, but, in doing so, brought protests on his head from other quarters, including the remote and isolated United States. Prague now claimed to have a million men under arms, and France was mobilizing. The German public were utterly unresponsive to the idea of a noble war. Hitler, according to Schmidt, who translated his urgent letter to Chamberlain on the night of September 27, seemed to be shrinking from the “extreme step,” but Goering had told Henderson during the day that if the Czech government did not accept the terms of the Godesberg memorandum by two o'clock the following day, mobilization and action would follow. He was “neither nervous nor excited, but absolutely confident,” wrote Henderson to Halifax. On September 28 Hitler kept in touch with Goering, the generals and Ribbentrop. Goering, according to Jodl, was saying, “A great war can hardly be avoided any longer. It may last seven years, and we will win it.” Even the British fleet was mobilized. During the morning the British, French and Italian ambassadors all intervened under instruction; François-Poncet had to seek Henderson's help to secure an interview with Hitler. Henderson telephoned Goering and told him that it was a matter of fresh proposals, and that peace or war would result. Goering did not wait to hear what the proposals were. “You need not say a word more,” he said to Henderson. “I am going immediately to see the Führer.”

Goering saw Hitler and again urged a peaceful solution by negotiation. He was supported by Schwerin von Krosigk and Neurath. According to Henderson, who regarded Goering at this supreme moment in the light of a friend and an ally for the British and French ambassadors, he most vehemently accused Ribbentrop of inciting war. It was even said that he “shouted that he knew what war was, and he did not want to go through it again,” though of course, if the Führer ordered it, “he would go himself in the first and leading plane,” and that “Ribbentrop should be in the seat next to him.” How much of this Goering roared in the presence of Hitler and how much to the men congregated in the anterooms of the Chancellery cannot now be determined, but Henderson maintained that Goering called Ribbentrop a “criminal fool” in front of Hitler. How far Goering was influential in diverting Hitler from war also cannot be known, for it was at this juncture that Mussolini himself intervened with a plea for the postponement of hostilities and an offer to join personally in mediation with the Czechs. Arrangements were made for Mussolini, Chamberlain, French Premier Daladier and Hitler to meet in Munich the following day. When Chamberlain announced this in the House of Commons the hysterical outburst of relief created a wild and disturbing scene. Jan Masaryk, the Czech ambassador to Britain, was there and looked on appalled by this shameful display. No representative of Czechoslovakia had been invited to Munich. Simultaneously, the German generals canceled their plot to remove Hitler from power, and forever after they used Chamberlain's and Daladier's assent to Munich as their excuse for inaction.

Goering used the intervention of Mussolini to edge Ribbentrop out of being a principal in formulating the Munich agreement. At Nuremberg he described how Attolico, the Italian ambassador to Germany, telephoned him at the orders of Mussolini before seven in the morning and insisted on seeing him personally and not Ribbentrop. Goering claimed that, accompanied by Attolico and Neurath (who was still influential with Hitler and held the artificial title of chairman of the Secret Cabinet Council, a body that did not exist), he went to see Hitler and persuaded him to accept Mussolini's offer. When in the afternoon Goering learned from François-Poncet that Daladier would join the conference, he cried, “
Gott sei Dank! Bravo!”
Goering, Neurath and Baron von Weizsaecker, State Secretary of the Foreign Ministry, who was deeply distressed at what he regarded as Ribbentrop's irresponsibility, together drafted a written proposal which should be presented the following day as Mussolini's personal solution to the problem. When Hitler had approved also, Schmidt translated it into French at their request, and the translation was given to the Italian ambassador for presentation by Mussolini the following day, when it reappeared at the Munich conference in Italian and was duly retranslated into German by Schmidt. The proposals contained in this much translated document were designed to circumvent further trouble, and Mussolini's authority was needed to forestall a plan that Ribbentrop was anxious to put forward himself. It was, in Henderson's words, “a combination of Hitler's and the Anglo-French proposals,” and Mussolini accepted the subterfuge in order to smooth the path to peace and avoid what everyone present, except perhaps Hitler himself and his shadow Ribbentrop, regarded as “a futile and senseless war.” Before Goering had left for Munich he had told Bodenschatz that he would do everything he could to avert hostilities.

Hitler was in a bad mood throughout the negotiations. When the protocol was at last ready for signature at two in the morning both Goering and Mussolini were “jubilant” and the atmosphere grew relaxed, though Hitler was nervous and moody; he sat glaring, crossing and uncrossing his legs. When the time for signature came, the inkstand was found to contain no ink.

When all was done, Goering emerged from the conference room and exclaimed to everyone, “This is peace.” On October 1 German troops crossed the frontier into the Sudeten territory. The same day Goering summoned Mastny to his office and told him Hitler would no longer tolerate BeneÅ¡ as the Czech head of state. Unless he resigned, Germany would be completely ruthless. BeneÅ¡ resigned on October 5, left Prague the following day and stayed on his estate in southern Bohemia until, on October 22, he finally left his country and went into exile in England. He was succeeded as President by Dr. Emil Hácha, an elderly and frail judge.

For a few more months Czechoslovakia was kept in being, though both Poland and Hungary seized, on threat of force, a further 8,150 square miles of territory in which there were Polish and Hungarian minorities. The country was ruined, both militarily and economically.

Czechoslovakia's loss was Germany's gain; for example, Germany acquired the Skoda works. Within a matter of days Hitler was planning the “liquidation” of the remainder of the country and looking ahead to the occupation of Memel. At a staff conference Goering had held on October 14, he was blunt about the future exploitation of the Sudetenland and added that “Czechia and Slovakia would become German domains,” and that “everything possible must be taken out.” On October 17 Ferdinand Durcansky, the Slovak leader, and Franz Karmasin, a leader of the German minority in Slovakia, met Goering in Berlin to discuss the establishment of complete independence for Slovakia, following the autonomy she had secured after Munich. They wanted, they said, “very close political, economic and military ties with Germany.” Goering noted afterward, “A Czech State minus Slovakia is even more completely at our mercy. Air base in Slovakia for operation against the East is very important.” When he met Durcansky again on November 11, he said that he himself favored the creation of an independent Slovakian State and “an autonomous Ukraine oriented toward this independent Slovakia.”
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