The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (85 page)

But the British leader’s opening remarks were only the prelude to what was to come. After what must have seemed to the morose German dictator an interminable exposition by Chamberlain in proposing further cooperation in bringing an end to the Spanish
Civil War
(which German and Italian “volunteers” were winning for Franco), in furthering disarmament, world economic prosperity, political peace in Europe and even a solution of the Russian problem, the Prime Minister drew out of his pocket a sheet of paper on which he had written something which he hoped they would both sign and release for immediate publication.

   We, the German Fuehrer and Chancellor, and the British Prime Minister [it read], have had a further meeting today and are agreed in recognizing that the question of Anglo–German relations is of the first importance for the two countries and for Europe.

We regard the agreement signed last night and the
Anglo–German Naval Agreement
as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.

We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries, and we are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference, and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe.

   Hitler read the declaration and quickly signed it, much to Chamberlain’s satisfaction, as Dr. Schmidt noted in his official report. The interpreter’s impression was that the Fuehrer agreed to it “with a certain reluctance … only to please Chamberlain,” who, he recounts further, “thanked the Fuehrer warmly … and underlined the great psychological effect which he expected from this document.”

The deluded British Prime Minister did not know, of course, that, as the secret German and Italian documents would reveal much later, Hitler
and Mussolini had already agreed at this very meeting in Munich that in time they would have to fight “side by side” against Great Britain. Nor, as we shall shortly see, did he divine much else that already was fermenting in Hitler’s lugubrious mind.
⁸⁸

Chamberlain returned to London—as did Daladier to
Paris
—in triumph. Brandishing the declaration which he had signed with Hitler, the jubilant Prime Minister faced a large crowd that pressed into Downing Street. After listening to shouts of “Good old Neville!” and a lusty singing of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” Chamberlain smilingly spoke a few words from a second-story window in Number 10.

“My good friends,” he said, “this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor.
^*
I believe it is peace in our time.”

The
Times
declared that “no conqueror returning from a victory on the battlefield has come adorned with nobler laurels.” There was a spontaneous movement to raise a “National Fund of Thanksgiving” in Chamberlain’s honor, which he graciously turned down. Only Duff Cooper, the First Lord of the Admiralty, resigned from the cabinet, and when in the ensuing Commons debate Winston Churchill, still a voice in the wilderness, began to utter his memorable words, “We have sustained a total, unmitigated defeat,” he was forced to pause, as he later recorded, until the storm of protest against such a remark had subsided.

   The mood in
Prague
was naturally quite different. At 6:20
A.M
. on September 30, the German chargé d’affaires had routed the Czech Foreign Minister, Dr.
Krofta
, out of bed and handed him the text of the Munich Agreement together with a request that Czechoslovakia send two representatives to the first meeting of the “International Commission,” which was to supervise the execution of the accord, at 5
P.M
. in Berlin.

For President Beneš, who conferred all morning at the
Hradschin Palace
with the political and military leaders, there was no alternative but to submit. Britain and France had not only deserted his country but would now back Hitler in the use of armed force should he turn down the terms of Munich. At ten minutes to one, Czechoslovakia surrendered, “under protest to the world,” as the official statement put it. “We were abandoned. We stand alone,” General Sirovy, the new Premier, explained bitterly in a broadcast to the Czechoslovak people at 5
P.M
.

To the very last Britain and France maintained their pressure on the country they had seduced and betrayed. During the day the British, French and Italian ministers went to see Dr. Krofta to make sure that there was no last-minute revolt of the Czechs against the surrender. The German chargé, Dr.
Hencke
, in a dispatch to Berlin described the scene.

   The French Minister’s attempt to address words of condolence to Krofta was cut short by the Foreign Minister’s remark: “We have been forced into this
situation; now everything is at an end; today it is our turn, tomorrow it will be the turn of others.” The British Minister succeeded with difficulty in saying that Chamberlain had done his utmost; he received the same answer as the French Minister. The Foreign Minister was a completely broken man and intimated only one wish: that the three Ministers should quickly leave the room.
⁸⁹

President Beneš resigned on October 5 on the insistence of Berlin and, when it became evident that his life was in danger, flew to England and exile. He was replaced provisionally by General Sirovy. On November 30, Dr. Emil Hácha, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a well-intentioned but weak and senile man of sixty-six, was selected by the National Assembly to be President of what remained of Czecho-
Slovakia
, which was now officially spelled with a hyphen.

What Chamberlain and Daladier at Munich had neglected to give Germany in
Czechoslovakia
the so-called “International Commission” proceeded to hand over. This hastily formed body consisted of the Italian, British and French ambassadors and the Czech minister in Berlin and Baron von Weizsaecker, the State Secretary in the German Foreign Office. Every dispute over additional territory for the Germans was settled in their favor, more than once under the threat from Hitler and OKW to resort to armed force. Finally, on October 13, the commission voted to dispense with the plebiscites which the Munich Agreement had called for in the disputed regions. There was no need for them.

The Poles and the Hungarians, after threatening military action against the helpless nation, now swept down, like vultures, to get a slice of Czechoslovak territory. Poland, at the insistence of Foreign Minister Józef Beck, who for the next twelve months will be a leading character in this narrative, took some 650 square miles of territory around
Teschen
, comprising a population of 228,000 inhabitants, of whom 133,000 were Czechs. Hungary got a larger slice in the award meted out on November 2 by Ribbentrop and Ciano: 7,500 square miles, with a population of 500,000 Magyars and 272,000 Slovaks.

Moreover, the truncated and now defenseless country was forced by Berlin to install a pro-German government of obvious fascist tendencies. It was clear that from now on the Czechoslovak nation existed at the mercy of the Leader of the Third Reich.

Under the terms of the Munich Agreement Hitler got substantially what he had demanded at Godesberg, and the “International Commission,” bowing to his threats, gave him considerably more. The final settlement of November 20, 1938, forced Czechoslovakia to cede to Germany 11,000square miles of territory in which dwelt 2,800,000 Sudeten Germans and 800,000 Czechs. Within this area lay all the vast Czech fortifications
which hitherto had formed the most formidable defensive line in Europe, with the possible exception of the
Maginot Line
in France.

But that was not all. Czechoslovakia’s entire system of rail, road, telephone and telegraph communications was disrupted. According to German figures, the dismembered country lost 66 per cent of its coal, 80 per cent of its lignite, 86 per cent of its chemicals, 80 per cent of its cement, 80 per cent of its textiles, 70 per cent of its iron and steel, 70 per cent of its electric power and 40 per cent of its timber. A prosperous industrial nation was split up and bankrupted overnight.

No wonder that Jodl could write joyfully in his diary on the night of Munich:

Many of the doubtful were converted and the few who were not were plunged into despair. The generals such as Beck, Halder and Witzleben and their civilian advisers had again been proved wrong. Hitler had got what he wanted, had achieved another great conquest, without firing a shot. His prestige soared to new heights. No one who was in Germany in the days after Munich, as this writer was, can forget the rapture of the German people. They were relieved that war had been averted; they were elated and swollen with pride at Hitler’s bloodless victory, not only over Czechoslovakia but over Great Britain and France. Within the short space of six months, they reminded you, Hitler had conquered Austria and the
Sudetenland
, adding ten million inhabitants to the Third Reich and a vast strategic territory which opened the way for German domination of southeastern Europe. And without the loss of a single German life! With the instinct of a genius rare in German history he had divined not only the weaknesses of the smaller states in Central Europe but those of the two principal Western democracies, Britain and France, and forced them to bend to his will. He had invented and used with staggering success a new strategy and technique of
political warfare
, which made actual war unnecessary.

In scarcely four and a half years this man of lowly origins had catapulted a disarmed, chaotic, nearly bankrupt Germany, the weakest of the big powers in Europe, to a position where she was regarded as the mightiest nation of the Old World, before which all the others, Britain even and France, trembled. At no step in this dizzy ascent had the victorious powers of Versailles dared to try to stop her, even when they had the power to do so. Indeed at Munich, which registered the greatest conquest of all, Britain and France had gone out of their way to support her. And what must have amazed Hitler most of all—it certainly astounded General
Beck, Hassell and others in their small circle of opposition—was that none of the men who dominated the governments of Britain and France (“little worms,” as the Fuehrer contemptuously spoke of them in private after Munich) realized the consequences of their inability to react with any force to one after the other of the Nazi leader’s aggressive moves.

Winston Churchill, in England, alone seemed to understand. No one stated the consequences of Munich more succinctly than he in his speech to the Commons of October 5:

But Churchill was not in the government and his words went unheeded.

   Was the Franco–British surrender at Munich necessary? Was Adolf Hitler not bluffing?

The answer, paradoxically, to both questions, we now know, is No. All the generals close to Hitler who survived the war agree that had it not been for Munich Hitler would have attacked Czechoslovakia on October 1, 1938, and they presume that, whatever momentary hesitations there might have been in London,
Paris
and Moscow, in the end Britain, France and Russia would have been drawn into the war.

And—what is most important to this history at this point—the German generals agree unanimously that Germany would have lost the war, and in short order. The argument of the supporters of Chamberlain and Daladier—and they were in the great majority at the time—that Munich saved the West not only from war but from defeat in war and, incidentally, preserved London and Paris from being wiped out by the Luftwaffe’s murderous bombing has been impressively refuted, so far as concern the last two points, by those in a position to know best: the German generals, and especially those generals who were closest to Hitler and who supported him from beginning to end the most fanatically.

The leading light among the latter was General Keitel, chief of OKW, toady to Hitler and constantly at his side. When asked on the stand at the Nuremberg trial what the reaction of the German generals was to Munich he replied:

It has always been assumed by Allied military experts that the German Army would have romped through Czechoslovakia. But to the testimony of Keitel that this would not have been the case must be added that of Field Marshal von Manstein, who became one of the most brilliant of the German field commanders. When he, in his turn, testified at Nuremberg (unlike Keitel and Jodl, he was not on trial for his life) on the German position at the time of Munich, he explained:

   Jodl, the “brains” of OKW, put it this way when he took the stand in his own defense at Nuremberg: