[b]13: CZECHOSLOVAKIA CEASES TO EXIST[/b]

 

 

WITHIN TEN DAYS of affixing his signature to the Munich Agreement -- before even the peaceful military occupation of the Sudeten land had been completed-Adolf Hitler got off an urgent top-secret message to General Keitel, Chief of OKW.

 

1. What reinforcements are necessary in the present situation to break all Czech resistance in Bohemia and Moravia?

 

2. How much time is required for the regrouping or moving up of new forces?

 

3. How much time will be required for the same purpose if it is executed after the intended demobilization and return measures?

 

4. How much time would be required to achieve the state of readiness of October 1? [1]

 

Keitel shot back to the Fuehrer on October 11 a telegram giving detailed answers. Not much time and not very many reinforcements would be necessary. There were already twenty-four divisions, including three armored and four motorized, in the Sudeten area. "OKW believes," Keitel stated, "that it would be possible to commence operations without reinforcements, in view of the present signs of weakness in Czech resistance." [2]

 

Thus assured, Hitler communicated his thoughts to his military chiefs ten days later.

 

[quote]TOP SECRET

 

Berlin, October 21, 1938

 

The future tasks for the armed forces and the preparations for the conduct of war resulting from these tasks will be laid down by me in a later directive.

 

Until this directive comes into force the armed forces must be prepared at all times for the following eventualities:

 

1. The securing of the frontiers of Germany.

 

2. The liquidation of the remainder of Czechoslovakia.

 

3. The occupation of the Memel district.[/quote]

 

Memel, a Baltic port of some forty thousand inhabitants, had been lost by Germany to Lithuania after Versailles. Since Lithuania was smaller and weaker than Austria and Czechoslovakia, the seizure of the town presented no problem to the Wehrmacht and in this directive Hitler merely mentioned that it would be "annexed." As for Czechoslovakia:

 

[quote]It must be possible to smash at any time the remainder of Czechoslovakia if her policy should become hostile toward Germany.

 

The preparations to be made by the armed forces for this contingency will be considerably smaller in extent than those for "Green"; they must, however, guarantee a considerably higher state of preparedness since planned mobilization measures have been dispensed with. The organization, order of battle and state of readiness of the units earmarked for that purpose are in peacetime to be so arranged for a surprise assault that Czechoslovakia herself will be deprived of all possibility of organized resistance. The object is the swift occupation of Bohemia and Moravia and the cutting off of Slovakia. [3][/quote]

 

Slovakia, of course, could be cut off by political means, which might make the use of German troops unnecessary. For this purpose the German Foreign Office was put to work. All through the first days of October, Ribbentrop and his aides urged the Hungarians to press for their share of the spoils in Slovakia. But when Hungary, which hardly needed German prodding to whet its greedy appetite, spoke of taking Slovakia outright, the Wilhelmstrasse put its foot down. It had other plans for the future of this land. The Prague government had already, immediately after Munich, granted Slovakia a far-reaching autonomy. The German Foreign Office advised "tolerating" this solution for the moment. But for the future the German thinking was summed up by Dr. Ernst Woermann, director of the Political Department of the Foreign Office, in a memorandum of October 7. "An independent Slovakia," he wrote, "would be weak constitutionally and would therefore best further the German need for penetration and settlement in the East." [4]

 

Here is a new turning point for the Third Reich. For the first time Hitler is on the verge of setting out to conquer non-Germanic lands. Over the last six weeks he had been assuring Chamberlain, in private and in public, that the Sudetenland was his last territorial demand in Europe. And though the British Prime Minister was gullible almost beyond comprehension in accepting Hitler's word, there was some ground for his believing that the German dictator would halt when he had digested the Germans who previously had dwelt outside the Reich's. frontier and were now within it. Had not the Fuehrer repeatedly said that he wanted no Czechs in the Third Reich? Had he not in Mein Kampf and in countless public speeches reiterated the Nazi theory that a Germany, to be strong, must be racially pure and therefore must not take in foreign, and especially Slav, peoples? He had. But also -- and perhaps this was forgotten in London -- he had preached in many a turgid page in Mein Kampf that Germany's future lay in conquering Lebensraum in the East. For more than a millennium this space had been occupied by the Slavs.

 

[b]THE WEEK OF THE BROKEN GLASS[/b]

 

In the autumn of 1938 another turning point for Nazi Germany was reached. It took place during what was later called in party circles the "Week of the Broken Glass."

 

On November 7, a seventeen-year-old German Jewish refugee by the name of Herschel Grynszpan shot and mortally wounded the third secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, Ernst vom Rath. The youth's father had been among ten thousand Jews deported to Poland in boxcars shortly before, and it was to revenge this and the general persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany that he went to the German Embassy intending to kill the ambassador, Count Johannes von Welczeck. But the young third secretary was sent out to see what he wanted, and was shot. There was irony in Rath's death, because he had been shadowed by the Gestapo as a result of his anti-Nazi attitude; for one thing, he had never shared the anti-Semitic aberrations of the rulers of his country.

 

On the night of November 9-10, shortly after the party bosses, led by Hitler and Goering, had concluded the annual celebration of the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, the worst pogrom that had yet taken place in the Third Reich occurred. According to Dr. Goebbels and the German press, which he controlled, it was a "spontaneous" demonstration of the German people in reaction to the news of the murder in Paris. But after the war, documents came to light which show how "spontaneous" it was. [5] They are among the most illuminating -- and gruesome -- secret papers of the prewar Nazi era.

 

On the evening of November 9, according to a secret report made by the chief party judge, Major Walther Buch, Dr. Goebbels issued instructions that "spontaneous demonstrations" were to be "organized and executed" during the night. But the real organizer was Reinhard Heydrich, the sinister thirty-four-year-old Number Two man, after Himmler, in the S.S., who ran the Security Service (S.D.) and the Gestapo. His teletyped orders during the evening are among the captured German documents.

 

At 1:20 A.M. on November 10 he flashed an urgent teletype message to all headquarters and stations of the state police and the S.D. instructing them to get together with party and S.S. leaders "to discuss the organization of the demonstrations."

 

[quote]a. Only such measures should be taken which do not involve danger to German life or property. (For instance synagogues are to be burned down only when there is no danger of fire to the surroundings.) [i]

 

b. Business and private apartments of Jews may be destroyed but not looted ....

 

d... . 2. The demonstrations which are going to take place should not be hindered by the police ...

 

5. As many Jews, especially rich ones, are to be arrested as can be accommodated in the existing prisons ... Upon their arrest, the appropriate concentration camps should be contacted immediately, in order to confine them in these camps as soon as possible.[/quote]

 

It was a night of horror throughout Germany. Synagogues, Jewish homes and shops went up in flames and several Jews, men, women and children, were shot or otherwise slain while trying to escape burning to death. A preliminary confidential report was made by Heydrich to Goering on the following day, November 11.

 

[quote]The extent of the destruction of Jewish shops and houses cannot yet be verified by figures ... 815 shops destroyed, 171 dwelling houses set on fire or destroyed only indicate a fraction of the actual damage so far as arson is concerned ... 119 synagogues were set on fire, and another 76 completely destroyed ... 20,000 Jews were arrested. 36 deaths were reported and those seriously injured were also numbered at 36. Those killed and injured are Jews....[/quote]

 

The ultimate number of murders of Jews that night is believed to have been several times the preliminary figure. Heydrich himself a day after his preliminary report gave the number of Jewish shops looted as 7,500. There were also some cases of rape, which Major Buch's party court, judging by its own report, considered worse than murder, since they violated the Nuremberg racial laws which forbade sexual intercourse between Gentiles and Jews. Such offenders were expelled from the party and turned over to the civil courts. Party members who simply murdered Jews "cannot be punished," Major Buch argued, since they had merely carried out orders. On that point he was quite blunt. "The public, down to the last man," he wrote, "realizes that political drives like those of November 9 were organized and directed by the party, whether this is admitted or not." [ii]

 

Murder and arson and pillage were not the only tribulations suffered by innocent German Jews as the result of the murder of Rath in Paris. The Jews had to pay for the destruction of their own property. Insurance monies due them were confiscated by the State. Moreover, they were subjected, collectively, to a fine of one billion marks as punishment, as Goering put it, "for their abominable crimes, etc." These additional penalties were assessed at a grotesque meeting of a dozen German cabinet ministers and ranking officials presided over by the corpulent Field Marshal on November 12, a partial stenographic record of which survives.

 

A number of German insurance firms faced bankruptcy if they were to make good the policies on gutted buildings (most of which, though they harbored Jewish shops, were owned by Gentiles) and damaged goods. The destruction in broken window glass alone came to five million marks ($1,250,000) as a Herr Hilgard, who had been called in to speak for the insurance companies, reminded Goering; and most of the glass replacements would have to be imported from abroad in foreign exchange, of which Germany was very short.

 

"This cannot continue!" exclaimed Goering, who, among other things, was the czar of the German economy. "We won't be able to last, with all this. Impossible!" And turning to Heydrich, he shouted, "I wish you had killed two hundred Jews instead of destroying so many valuables!"·

 

"Thirty-five were killed," Heydrich answered, in self-defense.

 

Not all the conversation, of which the partial stenographic record runs to ten thousand words, was so deadly serious. Goering and Goebbels had a lot of fun arguing about subjecting the Jews to further indignities. The Propaganda Minister said the Jews would be made to clean up and level off the debris of the synagogues; the sites would then be turned into parking lots. He insisted that the Jews be excluded from everything: schools, theaters, movies, resorts, public beaches, parks, even from the German forests. He proposed that there be special railway coaches and compartments for the Jews, but that they be made available only after all Aryans were seated.

 

"Well, if the train is overcrowded," Goering laughed, "we'll kick the Jew out and make him sit all alone all the way in the toilet."

 

When Goebbels, in all seriousness, demanded that the Jews be forbidden to enter the forests, Goering replied, "We shall give the Jews a certain part of the forest and see to it that various animals that look damned much like Jews -- the elk has a crooked nose like theirs -- get there also and become acclimated."

 

In such talk, and much more like it, did the leaders of the Third Reich while away the time in the crucial year of 1938.

 

But the question of who was to pay for the 25 million marks' worth of damage caused by a pogrom instigated and organized by the State was a fairly serious one, especially to Goering, who now had become responsible for the economic well-being of Nazi Germany. Hilgard, on behalf of the insurance companies, pointed out that if their policies were not honored to the Jews, the confidence of the people, both at home and abroad, in German insurance would be forfeited. On the other hand, he did not see how many of the smaller companies could pay up without going broke.

 

This problem was quickly solved by Goering. The insurance companies would pay the Jews in full, but the sums would be confiscated by the State and the insurers reimbursed for a part of their losses. This did not satisfy Herr Hilgard, who, judging by the record of the meeting, must have felt that he had fallen in with a bunch of lunatics.

 

[quote]GOERING: The Jew shall get the refund from the insurance company but the refund will be confiscated. There will remain some profit for the insurance companies, since they won't have to make good for all the damage. Herr Hilgard, you may consider yourself damned lucky.

 

HILGARD: I have no reason to. The fact that we won't have to pay for all the damage, you call a profit![/quote]

 

The Field Marshal was not accustomed to such talk and he quickly squelched the bewildered businessman.

 

[quote]GOERING: Just a moment! If you are legally bound to pay five millions and all of a sudden an angel in my somewhat corpulent shape appears before you and tells you that you may keep one million, for heaven's sake isn't that a profit? I should like to go fifty-fifty with you, or whatever you call it. I have only to look at you. Your whole body seethes with satisfaction. You are getting a big rake-off![/quote]

 

The insurance executive was slow to see the point.

 

[quote]HILGARD: All the insurance companies are the losers. That is so, and remains so. Nobody can tell me differently.

 

GOERING: Then why don't you take care of it that a few windows less are being smashed![/quote]

 

The Field Marshal had had enough of this commercial-minded man. Herr Hilgard was dismissed, disappearing into the limbo of history.

 

A representative of the Foreign Office dared to suggest that American public opinion be considered in taking further measures against the Jews. [iii] This inspired an outburst from Goering: "That country of scoundrels! ... That gangster state!"

 

After further lengthy discussion it was agreed to solve the Jewish question in the following manner: eliminate the Jews from the German economy; transfer all Jewish business enterprises and property, including jewelry and works of art, to Aryan hands with some compensation in bonds from which the Jews could use the interest but not the capital. The matter of excluding Jews from schools, resorts, parks, forests, etc., and of either expelling them after they had been deprived of all their property or confining them to German ghettos where they would be impressed as forced labor, was left for further consideration by a committee.

 

As Heydrich put it toward the close of the meeting: "In spite of the elimination of the Jews from economic life, the main problem remains, namely, to kick the Jew out of Germany." Count Schwerin von Krosigk, the Minister of Finance, the former Rhodes scholar who prided himself on representing the "traditional and decent Germany" in the Nazi government, agreed "that we will have to do everything to shove the Jews into foreign countries." As for the ghettos, this German nobleman said meekly, "I don't imagine the prospect of the ghetto is very nice. The idea of the ghetto is not a very agreeable one."

 

At 2:30 P.M. -- after nearly four hours -- Goering brought the meeting to a close.

 

[quote]I shall close the meeting with these words: German Jewry shall, as punishment for their abominable crimes, et cetera, have to make a contribution for one billion marks. That will work. The swine won't commit another murder. Incidentally, I would like to say that I would not like to be a Jew in Germany.[/quote]

 

Much worse was to be inflicted on the Jews by this man and this State and its Fuehrer in the course of time, and a brief time it turned out to be. On the flaming, riotous night of November 9, 1938, the Third Reich had deliberately turned down a dark and savage road from which there was to be no return. A good many Jews had been murdered and tortured and robbed before, but these crimes, except for those which took place in the concentration camps, had been committed mostly by brown-shirted rowdies acting out of their own sadism and greed while the State authorities looked on, or looked the other way. Now the German government itself had organized and carried out a vast pogrom. The killings, the looting, the burning of synagogues and houses and shops on the night of November 9 were its doing. So were the official decrees, duly published in the official gazette, the Reichsgesetzblatt -- three of them on the day of Goering's meeting -- which fined the Jewish community a billion marks, eliminated them from the economy, robbed them of what was left of their property and drove them toward the ghetto -- and worse.

 

World opinion was shocked and revolted by such barbarity in a nation which boasted a centuries-old Christian and humanist culture. Hitler, in turn, was enraged by the world reaction and convinced himself that it merely proved the power and scope of "the Jewish world conspiracy."

 

In retrospect, it is easy to see that the horrors inflicted upon the Jews of Germany on November 9 and the harsh and brutal measures taken against them immediately afterward were portents of a fatal weakening which in the end would bring the dictator, his regime and his nation down in utter ruin. The evidences of Hitler's megalomania we have seen permeating hundreds of pages of this narrative. But until now he had usually been able to hold it in check at critical stages in his rise and in that of his country. At such moments his genius for acting not only boldly, but usually only after a careful calculation of the consequences, had won him one crashing success after another. But now, as November 9 and its aftermath clearly showed, Hitler was losing his self-control. His megalomania was getting the upper hand. The stenographic record of the Goering meeting on November 12 reveals that it was Hitler who, in the final analysis, was responsible for the holocaust of that November evening; it was he who gave the necessary approval to launch it; he who pressed Goering to go ahead with the elimination of the Jews from German life. From now on the absolute master of the Third Reich would show little of that restraint which had saved him so often before. And though his genius and that of his country would lead to further startling conquests, the poisonous seeds of eventual self-destruction for the dictator and his land had now been sown.

 

Hitler's sickness was contagious; the nation was catching it, as if it were a virus. Individually, as this writer can testify from personal experience, many Germans were as horrified by the November 9 inferno as were Americans and Englishmen and other foreigners. But neither the leaders of the Christian churches nor the generals nor any other representatives of the "good" Germany spoke out at once in open protest. They bowed to what General von Fritsch called "the inevitable," or "Germany's destiny."

 

The atmosphere of Munich soon was dissipated. At Saarbruecken, at Weimar, at Munich, Hitler delivered petulant speeches that fall warning the outside world and particularly the British to mind their own business and to quit concerning themselves "with the fate of Germans within the frontiers of the Reich." That fate, he thundered, was exclusively Germany's affair. It could not be long before even Neville Chamberlain would be awakened to the nature of the German government which he had gone so far to appease. Gradually, as the eventful year of 1938 gave way to ominous 1939, the Prime Minister got wind of what the Fuehrer whom he had tried so hard to personally accommodate in the interest of European peace was up to behind the scenes. [iv]

 

Not long after Munich Ribbentrop journeyed to Rome. His mind was "fixed" on war, Ciano noted in his diary of October 28. [9]

 

[quote]The Fuehrer [the German Foreign Minister told Mussolini and Ciano] is convinced that we must inevitably count on a war with the Western democracies in the course of a few years, perhaps three or four ... The Czech crisis has shown our power! We have the advantage of the initiative and are masters of the situation. We cannot be attacked. The military situation is excellent: as from September [1939] we could face a war with the great democracies. [v][/quote]

 

To the young Italian Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop was "vain, frivolous, and loquacious," and in so describing him in his diary he added, "The Duce says you only have to look at his head to see that he has a small brain." The German Foreign Minister had come to Rome to persuade Mussolini to sign a military alliance between Germany, Japan and Italy, a draft of which had been given the Italians at Munich; but Mussolini stalled for time. He was not yet ready, Ciano noted, to shut the door on Britain and France.

 

Hitler himself toyed that autumn with the idea of trying to detach France from her ally over the Channel. When on October 18 he received the French ambassador, Francois-Poncet, for a farewell visit in the eerie fastness of Eagle's Nest, high above Berchtesgaden on a mountaintop, [vi] he broke out into a bitter attack on Great Britain. The ambassador found the Fuehrer pale, his face drawn with fatigue, but not too tired to inveigh against Albion. Britain re-echoed "with threats and calls to arms." She was selfish and took on "superior" airs. It was the British who were destroying the spirit of Munich. And so on. France was different. Hitler said he wanted more friendly and close relations with her. To prove it, he was willing to sign at once a pact of friendship, guaranteeing their present frontiers (and thus again renouncing any German claims to Alsace-Lorraine) and proposing to settle any future differences by consultation.

 

The pact was duly signed in Paris on December 6, 1938, by the German and French foreign ministers. France, by that time, had somewhat recovered from the defeatist panic of the Munich days. The writer happened to be in Paris on the day the paper was signed and noted the frosty atmosphere. When Ribbentrop drove through the streets they were completely deserted, and several cabinet ministers and other leading figures in the French political and literary worlds, including the eminent presidents of the Senate and the Chamber, MM. Jeanneney and Herriot respectively, refused to attend the social functions accorded the Nazi visitor.

 

From this meeting of Bonnet and Ribbentrop stemmed a misunderstanding which was to play a certain part in future events. The German Foreign Minister claimed that Bonnet had assured him that after Munich France was no longer interested in Eastern Europe and he subsequently interpreted this as meaning that the French would give Germany a free hand in this region, especially in regard to rump Czechoslovakia and Poland. Bonnet denied this. According to Schmidt's minutes of the meeting, Bonnet declared, in answer to Ribbentrop's demand that Germany's sphere of influence in the East be recognized, that "conditions had changed fundamentally since Munich." [11] This ambiguous remark was soon stretched by the slippery German Foreign Minister into the flat statement, which he passed along to Hitler, that "at Paris Bonnet had declared he was no longer interested in questions concerning the East." France's swift surrender at Munich had already convinced the Fuehrer of this. It was not quite true.

 

[b]SLOVAKIA "WINS" ITS "INDEPENDENCE"[/b]

 

What had happened to the German guarantee of the rest of Czechoslovakia which Hitler had solemnly promised at Munich to give? When the new French ambassador in Berlin, Robert Coulondre, inquired of Weizsaecker on December 21, 1938, the State Secretary replied that the destiny of Czechoslovakia lay in the hands of Germany and that he rejected the idea of a British-French guarantee. As far back as October 14, when the new Czech Foreign Minister, Frantisek Chvalkovsky, had come humbly begging for crumbs at the hand of Hitler in Munich and had inquired whether Germany was going to join Britain and France in the guarantee of his country's shrunken frontiers, the Fuehrer replied sneeringly that "the British and French guarantees were worthless ... and that the only effective guarantee was that by Germany." [12]

 

Yet, as 1939 began, it was still not forthcoming. The reason was simple. The Fuehrer had no intention of giving it. Such a guarantee would have interfered with the plans which he had begun to lay immediately after Munich. Soon there would be no Czechoslovakia to guarantee. To start with, Slovakia would be induced to break away.

 

A few days after Munich, on October 17, Goering had received two Slovak leaders, Ferdinand Durcansky and Mach, and the leader of the German minority in Slovakia, Franz Karmasin. Durcansky, who was Deputy Prime Minister of the newly appointed autonomous Slovakia, assured the Field Marshal that what the Slovaks really wanted was "complete independence, with very close political, economic and military ties with Germany." In a secret Foreign Office memorandum of the same date it was noted that Goering had decided that independence for Slovakia must be supported. "A Czech State minus Slovakia is even more completely at our mercy. Air base in Slovakia for operation against the East very important." [13] Such were Goering's thoughts on the matter in mid-October.

 

We must here attempt to follow a double thread in the German plan: to detach Slovakia from Prague, and to prepare for the liquidation of what remained of the state by the military occupation of the Czech lands, Bohemia and Moravia. On October 21, 1938, as we have seen, Hitler had directed the Wehrmacht to be ready to carry out that liquidation. [vii] On December 17, General Keitel issued what he called a "supplement to Directive of October 21":

 

[quote]TOP SECRET

 

With reference to the "liquidation of the Rump Czech State," the Fuehrer has given the following orders:

 

The operation is to be prepared on the assumption that no resistance worth mentioning is to be expected.

 

To the outside world it must clearly appear that it is merely a peaceful action and not a warlike undertaking.

 

The action must therefore be carried out by the peacetime armed forces only, without reinforcement by mobilization ... [14][/quote]

 

Try as it might to please Hitler, the new pro-German government of Czechoslovakia began to realize as the new year began that the country's goose was cooked. Just before Christmas, 1938, the Czech cabinet, in order to further appease the Fuehrer, had dissolved the Communist Party and suspended all Jewish teachers in German schools. On January 12, 1939, Foreign Minister Chvalkovsky, in a message to the German Foreign Office, stressed that his government "will endeavor to prove its loyalty and good will by far-reaching fulfillment of Germany's wishes." On the same day he brought to the attention of the German charge in Prague the spreading rumors "that the incorporation of Czechoslovakia into the Reich was imminent." [15]

 

To see if even the pieces could be saved Chvalkovsky finally prevailed upon Hitler to receive him in Berlin on January 21. It turned out to be a painful scene, though not as painful for the Czechs as one that would shortly follow. The Czech Foreign Minister groveled before the mighty German dictator, who was in one of his most bullying moods. Czechoslovakia, said Hitler, had been saved from catastrophe by "Germany's moderation." Nevertheless, unless the Czechs showed a different spirit, he would "annihilate" them. They must forget their "history," which was "schoolboy nonsense," and do as the Germans bade. That was their only salvation. Specifically, Czechoslovakia must leave the League of Nations, drastically reduce the size of her Army -- "because it did not count anyway" -- join the Anti-Comintern Pact, accept German direction of her foreign policy, make a preferential trade agreement with Germany, one condition of which was that no new Czech industries could be established without German consent, [viii] dismiss all officials and editors not friendly to the Reich and, finally, outlaw the Jews, as Germany had done under its Nuremberg Laws. ("With us, the Jews will be destroyed," Hitler told his visitor.) On the same day Chvalkovsky received further demands from Ribbentrop, who threatened "catastrophic consequences" unless the Czechs immediately mended their ways and did as they were told. The German Foreign Minister, so much the lackey in the presence of Hitler but a boor and a bully with anyone over whom he had the upper hand, bade Chvalkovsky not to mention the new German demands to the British and French but just to go ahead and carry them out. [17]

 

And to do so without worrying about any German guarantee of the Czech frontiers! Apparently there had been little worry about this in Paris and London. Four months had gone by since Munich, and still Hitler had not honored his word to add Germany's guarantee to that given by Britain and France. Finally on February 8 an Anglo-French note verbale was presented in Berlin stating that the two governments "would now be glad to learn the views of the German Government as to the best way of giving effect to the understanding reached at Munich in regard to the guarantee of Czechoslovakia." [18]

 

Hitler himself, as the captured German Foreign Office documents establish, drafted the reply, which was not made until February 28. It said that the time had not yet come for a German guarantee. Germany would have to "await first a clarification of the internal development of Czechoslovakia." [19]

 

The Fuehrer already was shaping that "internal development" toward an obvious end. On February 12 he received at the Chancellery in Berlin Dr. Vojtech Tuka, one of the Slovak leaders, whose long imprisonment had embittered him against the Czechs. [ix] Addressing Hitler as "my Fuehrer," as the secret German memorandum of the talk emphasizes, Dr. Tuka begged the German dictator to make Slovakia independent and free. "I lay the destiny of my people in your hands, my Fuehrer," he declared. "My people await their complete liberation from you."

 

Hitler's reply was somewhat evasive. He said that unfortunately he had not understood the Slovak problem. Had he known the Slovaks wanted to be independent he would have arranged it at Munich. It would be "a comfort to him to know that Slovakia was independent ... He could guarantee an independent Slovakia at any time, even today ..." These were comforting words to Professor Tuka too. [20] "This," he said later, "was the greatest day of my life."

 

The curtain on the next act of the Czechoslovak tragedy could now go up. By another one of those ironies with which this narrative history is so full, it was the Czechs in Prague who forced the curtain up a little prematurely. By the beginning of March 1938 they were caught in a terrible dilemma. The separatist movements in Slovakia and Ruthenia, fomented, as we have seen, by the German government (and in Ruthenia also by Hungary, which was hungry to annex that little land) had reached such a state that unless they were squelched Czechoslovakia would break up. In that case Hitler would surely occupy Prague. If the separatists were put down by the central government, then the Fuehrer, just as certainly, would take advantage of the resulting disturbance to also march into Prague.

 

The Czech government, after much hesitation and only after the provocation became unbearable, chose the second alternative. On March 6, Dr. Hacha, the President of Czechoslovakia, dismissed the autonomous Ruthenian government from office, and on the night of March 9-10 the autonomous Slovakian government. The next day he ordered the arrest of Monsignor Tiso, the Slovak Premier, Dr. Tuka and Durcansky and proclaimed martial law in Slovakia. The one courageous move of this government, which had become so servile to Berlin, quickly turned into a disaster which destroyed it.

 

The swift action by the tottering Prague government caught Berlin by surprise. Goering had gone off to sunny San Remo for a vacation. Hitler was on the point of leaving for Vienna to celebrate the first anniversary of the Anschluss. But now the master improviser went feverishly to work. On March 11, he decided to take Bohemia and Moravia by ultimatum. The text was drafted that day on Hitler's orders by General Keitel and sent to the German Foreign Office. It called upon the Czechs to submit to military occupation without resistance. [21] For the moment, however, it remained a "top military secret."

 

It was now time for Hitler to "liberate" Slovakia. Karol Sidor, who had represented the autonomous Slovak government at Prague, was named by President Hacha to be the new Premier of it in place of Monsignor Tiso. Returning to Bratislava, the Slovak seat of government, on Saturday, March 11, Sidor called a meeting of his new cabinet. At ten o'clock in the evening the session of the Slovak government was interrupted by strange and unexpected visitors. Seyss-Inquart, the quisling Nazi Governor of Austria, and Josef Buerckel, the Nazi Gauleiter of Austria, accompanied by five German generals, pushed their way into the meeting and told the cabinet ministers to proclaim the independence of Slovakia at once. Unless they did, Hitler, who had decided to settle the question of Slovakia definitely and now, would disinterest himself in the fate of Slovakia. [22]

 

Sidor, who opposed severing all links with the Czechs, stalled for time, but the next morning Monsignor Tiso, who had escaped from a monastery where he supposedly was under house arrest, demanded a cabinet meeting, though he was no longer himself in the cabinet. To forestall further interruptions by high German officials and generals, Sidor called the meeting in his own apartment, and when this became unsafe -- for German storm troopers were taking over the town -- he adjourned it to the offices of a local newspaper. There Tiso informed him that he had just received a telegram from Buerckel inviting him to go at once to see the Fuehrer in Berlin. If he refused the invitation, Buerckel threatened, two German divisions across the Danube from Bratislava would march in and Slovakia would be divided up between Germany and Hungary. Arriving in Vienna the next morning, Monday, March 13, with the intention of proceeding to Berlin by train, the chubby little prelate [x] was packed into a plane by the Germans and flown to the presence of Hitler. For the Fuehrer, there was no time to waste.

 

When Tiso and Durcansky arrived at the Chancellery in Berlin at 7:40 on the evening of March 13, they found Hitler flanked not only by Ribbentrop but by his two top generals, Brauchitsch, Commander in Chief of the German Army, and Keitel, Chief of OKW. Though they may not have realized it, the Slovaks also found the Fuehrer in a characteristic mood. Here again, thanks to the captured confidential minutes of the meeting, we may peer into the weird mind of the German dictator, rapidly giving way to megalomania, and watch him spinning his fantastic lies and uttering his dire threats in a manner and to an extent which he no doubt was sure would never come to public attention. [23]

 

"Czechoslovakia," he said, "owed it only to Germany that she had not been mutilated further." The Reich had exhibited "the greatest self-control." Yet the Czechs had not appreciated this. "During recent weeks," he went on, working himself up easily to a fine lather, "conditions have become impossible. The old Benes spirit has come to life again."

 

The Slovaks had also disappointed him. After Munich he had "fallen out" with his friends the Hungarians by not permitting them to grab Slovakia. He had thought Slovakia wanted to be independent.

 

[quote]He had now summoned Tiso in order to clear up this question in a very short time. [xi] ... The question was: Did Slovakia want to lead an independent existence or not? ... It was a question not of days but of hours. If Slovakia wished to become independent he would support and even guarantee it ... If she hesitated or refused to be separated from Prague, he would leave the fate of Slovakia to events for which he was no longer responsible.[/quote]

 

At this point, the German minutes reveal, Ribbentrop "handed to the Fuehrer a report just received announcing Hungarian troop movements on the Slovak frontier. The Fuehrer read this report, told Tiso of its contents, and expressed the hope that Slovakia would reach a decision soon."

 

Tiso did not give his decision then. He asked the Fuehrer to "pardon him if, under the impact of the Chancellor's words, he could make no definite decision at once." But the Slovaks, he quickly added, "would prove themselves worthy of the Fuehrer's benevolence."

 

This they did in a conference which continued far into the night at the Foreign Ministry. According to the Nuremberg testimony of Keppler, who had been Hitler's secret agent in Bratislava, as he had been the year before in Vienna on the eve of the Anschluss, the Germans helped Tiso draft a telegram, which the "Premier" was to send as soon as he returned to Bratislava, proclaiming Slovakia's independence and urgently requesting the Fuehrer to take over the protection of the new state. [24] It is reminiscent of the "telegram" dictated by Goering just a year before in which Seyss-Inquart was to appeal to Hitler to send German troops to Austria. By this time the Nazi "telegram" technique had been perfected. The telegram, considerably abridged, was duly dispatched by Tiso on March 16, and Hitler immediately replied that he would be glad to "take over the protection of the Slovak State."

 

At the Foreign Office that night Ribbentrop also drafted the Slovak proclamation of "independence" and had it translated into Slovak in time for Tiso to take it back to Bratislava, where the "Premier" read it -- in slightly altered form, as one German agent reported -- to Parliament on the following day, Tuesday, March 14. Attempts by several Slovak deputies to at least discuss it were squelched by Karmasin, the leader of the German minority, who warned that German troops would occupy the country if there was any delay in proclaiming independence. Faced with this threat the doubting deputies gave in.

 

Thus was "independent" Slovakia born on March 14, 1939. Though British diplomatic representatives were quick to inform London as to the manner of its birth, Chamberlain, as we shall see, was just as quick to use Slovakia's "secession" as an excuse for Britain not to honor its guarantee of Czechoslovakia after Hitler, on that very evening, March 14, acted to finish what had been left undone at Munich.

 

The life of the Czechoslovak Republic of Masaryk and Benes had now run out. And once again the harassed leaders in Prague played into Hitler's hands to set up the final act of their country's tragedy. The aging, bewildered President Hacha asked to be received by the Fuehrer. [xii] Hitler graciously consented. It gave him an opportunity to set the stage for one of the most brazen acts of his entire career.

 

Consider how well the dictator had already arranged the set as he waited on the afternoon of March 14 for the President of Czechoslovakia to arrive. The proclamations of independence of Slovakia and Ruthenia, which he had so skillfully engineered, left Prague with only the Czech core of Bohemia and Moravia. Had not Czechoslovakia in reality ceased to exist -- the nation whose frontiers Britain and France had guaranteed against aggression? Chamberlain and Daladier, his partners at Munich where the guarantee had been solemnly given, already had their "out." That they would take it he had no doubt -- and he was right. That disposed of any danger of foreign intervention. But to make doubly sure -- to see to it that his next move looked quite legal and legitimate by the vague standards of international law, at least on paper -- he would force the weak and senile Hacha, who had begged to see him, to accept the very solution which he had intended to achieve by military force. And in so doing he could make it appear -- he, who, alone in Europe, had mastered the new technique of bloodless conquest, as the Anschluss and Munich had proved -- that the President of Czechoslovakia had actually and formally asked for it. The niceties of "legality," which he had perfected so well in taking over power in Germany, would be preserved in the conquest of a non-Germanic land.

 

Hitler had also set the stage to fool the German and other gullible people in Europe. For several days now German provocateurs had been trying to stir up trouble in various Czech towns, Prague, Bruenn and Iglau. They had not had much success because, as the German Legation in Prague reported, the Czech "police have been instructed to take no action against Germans, even in cases of provocation." [26] But this failure did not prevent Dr. Goebbels from whipping up the German press into a frenzy over invented acts of terror by the Czechs against the poor Germans. As the French ambassador, M. Coulondre, informed Paris, they were the same stories with the same headlines which Dr. Goebbels had concocted during the Sudeten crisis -- down to the pregnant German woman struck down by Czech beasts and the general "Blutbad" ("blood bath") to which the defenseless Germans were being subjected by the Czech barbarians. Hitler could assure the proud German people that their kinsmen would not remain unprotected for long.

 

Such was the situation and such were Hitler's plans, we now know from the German archives, as the train bearing President Hacha and his Foreign Minister, Chvalkovsky, drew into the Anhalt Station in Berlin at 10:40 on the evening of March 14. Because of a heart condition the President had been unable to fly.

 

[quote]THE ORDEAL OF DR. HACHA[/quote]

 

The German protocol was perfect. The Czech President was accorded all the formal honors due to a head of state. There was a military guard of honor at the station, where the German Foreign Minister himself greeted the distinguished visitor and slipped his daughter a fine bouquet of flowers. At the swank Adlon Hotel, where the party was put up in the best suite, there were chocolates for Miss Hacha -- a personal gift of Adolf Hitler, who believed that everyone else shared his craving for sweets. And when the aged President and his Foreign Minister arrived at the Chancellery he was given a salute by an S.S. guard of honor.

 

They were not summoned to Hitler's presence until 1:15 A.M. Hacha must have known what was in store for him. Before his train had left Czech territory he learned from Prague that German troops had already occupied Moravska-Ostrava, an important Czech industrial town, and were poised all along the perimeter of Bohemia and Moravia to strike. And he saw at once, as he entered the Fuehrer's study in the early-morning hour, that, besides Ribbentrop and Weizsaecker, Field Marshal Goering, who had been urgently recalled from his holiday at San Remo, and General Keitel stood at Hitler's side. Most probably, as he went into this lion's den, he did not notice that Hitler's physician, the quack Dr. Theodor Morell, was on tap. But the doctor was, and for good reason.

 

The secret German minutes of the meeting reveal a pitiful scene at the very outset. The unhappy Dr. Hacha, despite his background as a respected judge of the Supreme Court, shed all human dignity by groveling before the swaggering German Fuehrer. Perhaps the President thought that only in this way could he appeal to Hitler's generosity and save something for his people; but regardless of his motive, his words, as the Germans recorded them for their confidential archives, nauseate the reader even so long afterward as today. He himself, Hacha assured Hitler, had never mixed in politics. He had rarely seen the founders of the Czechoslovak Republic, Masaryk and Benes, and what he had seen of them he did not like. Their regime, he said, was "alien" to him -- "so alien that immediately after the change of regime [after Munich] he had asked himself whether it was a good thing for Czechoslovakia to be an independent state at all."

 

[quote]He was convinced that the destiny of Czechoslovakia lay in the Fuehrer's hands, and he believed it was in safekeeping in such hands ... Then he came to what affected him most, the fate of his people. He felt that it was precisely the Fuehrer who would understand his holding the view that Czechoslovakia had the right to live a national life ... Czechoslovakia was being blamed because there still existed many supporters of the Benes system ... The Government was trying by every means to silence them. This was about all he had to say.[/quote]

 

Adolf Hitler then said all there was to say. After rehearsing all the alleged wrongs which the Czechoslovakia of Masaryk and Benes had done to Germans and Germany, and reiterating that unfortunately the Czechs had not changed since Munich, he came to the point.

 

[quote]He had come to the conclusion that this journey by the President, despite his advanced years, might be of great benefit to his country because it was only a matter of hours now before Germany intervened ... He harbored no enmity against any nation ... That the Rump State of Czechoslovakia existed at all was attributable only to his loyal attitude ... In the autumn he had not wished to draw the final conclusions because he had thought a coexistence possible, but he had left no doubt that if the Benes tendencies did not disappear completely he would destroy this state completely.[/quote]

 

They had not disappeared, and he gave "examples."

 

[quote]And so last Sunday, March 12, the die was cast ... He had given the order for the invasion by the German troops and for the incorporation of Czechoslovakia into the German Reich. [xiii][/quote]

 

"Hacha and Chvalkovsky," noted Dr. Schmidt, "sat as though turned to stone. Only their eyes showed that they were alive." But Hitler was not quite through. He must humble his guests with threats of Teutonic terror.

 

[quote]The German Army [Hitler continued] had already marched in today, and at a barracks where resistance was offered it had been ruthlessly broken.

 

Tomorrow morning at six o'clock the German Army was to enter Czechia from all sides and the German Air Force would occupy the Czech airfields. There were two possibilities. The first was that the entry of German troops might develop into fighting. In that case, resistance would be broken by brute force. The other possibility was that the entry of the German troops would take place in a peaceful manner, in which case it would be easy for the Fuehrer to accord Czechoslovakia a generous way of life of her own, autonomy, and a certain measure of national freedom.

 

He was doing all this not from hatred but in order to protect Germany. If last autumn Czechoslovakia had not given in, the Czech people would have been exterminated. No one would have prevented him doing it. If it came to a fight ... in two days the Czech Army would cease to exist. Naturally, some Germans would be killed too and this would engender a hatred which would compel him, in self-preservation, not to concede autonomy. The world would not care a jot about this. He sympathized with the Czech people when he read the foreign press. It gave him the impression which might be summed up in the German proverb: "The Moor has done his duty; the Moor can go." ...

 

That was why he had asked Hacha to come here. This was the last good turn he could render the Czech people ... Perhaps Hacha's visit might prevent the worst ...

 

The hours were passing. At six o'clock the troops would march in. He was almost ashamed to say it, but for every Czech battalion there was a German division. He would like now to advise him [Hacha] to withdraw with Chvalkovsky and discuss what was to be done.[/quote]

 

What was to be done? The broken old President did not have to withdraw to decide that. He told Hitler at once, "The position is quite clear. Resistance would be folly." But how, he asked -- since it was now a little after 2 A.M. -- could he, in the space of four hours, arrange to restrain the whole Czech people from offering resistance? The Fuehrer replied that he had better consult with his companions. The German military machine was already in motion and could not be stopped. Hacha should get in touch at once with Prague. "It was a grave decision," the German minutes report Hitler as saying, "but he saw dawning the possibility of a long period of peace between the two peoples. Should the decision be otherwise, he saw the annihilation of Czechoslovakia."

 

With these words, he dismissed his guests for the time being. It was 2: 15 A.M. In an adjoining room Goering and Ribbentrop stepped up the pressure on the two victims. According to the French ambassador, who in an official dispatch to Paris depicted the scene as he got it from what he believed to be an authentic source, Hacha and Chvalkovsky protested against the outrage to their nation. They declared they would not sign the document of surrender. Were they to do so they would be forever cursed by their people.

 

[quote]The German ministers [Goering and Ribbentrop] were pitiless [M. Coulondre wrote in his dispatch]. They literally hunted Dr. Hacha and M. Chvalkovsky round the table on which the documents were lying, thrusting them continually before them, pushing pens into their hands, incessantly repeating that if they continued in their refusal, half of Prague would lie in ruins from bombing within two hours, and that this would be only the beginning. Hundreds of bombers were waiting the order to take off, and they would receive that order at six in the morning if the signatures were not forthcoming. [xiv][/quote]

 

At this point, Dr. Schmidt, who seems to have managed to be present whenever and wherever the drama of the Third Reich reached a climax, heard Goering shouting for Dr. Morell.

 

"Hacha has fainted!" Goering cried out.

 

For a moment the Nazi bullies feared that the prostrate Czech President might die on their hands and, as Schmidt says, "that the whole world will say tomorrow that he was murdered at the Chancellery." Dr. Morell's specialty was injections -- much later he would almost kill Hitler with them -- and he now applied the needle to Dr. Hacha and brought him back to consciousness. The President was revived sufficiently to be able to grasp the telephone which the Germans thrust into his hand and talk to his government in Prague over a special line which Ribbentrop had ordered rigged up. He apprised the Czech cabinet of what had happened and advised surrender. Then, somewhat further restored by a second injection from the needle of Dr. Morell, the President of the expiring Republic stumbled back into the presence of Adolf Hitler to sign his country's death warrant. It was now five minutes to four in the morning of March 15, 1939.

 

The text had been prepared "beforehand by Hitler," Schmidt recounts, and during Hacha's fainting spells the German interpreter had been busy copying the official communique, which had also been written up "beforehand," and which Hacha and Chvalkovsky were also forced to sign. It read as follows:

 

[quote]Berlin, March 15, 1939

 

At their request, the Fuehrer today received the Czechoslovak President, Dr. Hacha, and the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, Dr. Chvalkovsky, in Berlin in the presence of Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop. At the meeting the serious situation created by the events of recent weeks in the present Czechoslovak territory was examined with complete frankness.

 

The conviction was unanimously expressed on both sides that the aim of all efforts must be the safeguarding of calm, order and peace in this part of Central Europe. The Czechoslovak President declared that, in order to serve this object and to achieve ultimate pacification, he confidently placed the fate of the Czech people and country in the hands of the Fuehrer of the German Reich. The Fuehrer accepted this declaration and expressed his intention of taking the Czech people under the protection of the German Reich and of guaranteeing them an autonomous development of their ethnic life as suited to their character.[/quote]

 

Hitler's chicanery had reached, perhaps, its summit.

 

According to one of his woman secretaries, Hitler rushed from the signing into his office, embraced all the women present and exclaimed, "Children! This is the greatest day of my life! I shall go down in history as the greatest German!"

 

It did not occur to him -- how could it? -- that the end of Czechoslovakia might be the beginning of the end of Germany. From this dawn of March 15, 1939 -- the Ides of March -- the road to war, to defeat, to disaster, as we now know, stretched just ahead. It would be a short road and as straight as a line could be. And once on it, and hurtling down it, Hitler, like Alexander and Napoleon before him, could not stop. [28]

 

At 6 A.M. on March 15 German troops poured into Bohemia and Moravia. They met no resistance, and by evening Hitler was able to make the triumphant entry into Prague which he felt Chamberlain had cheated him of at Munich. Before leaving Berlin he had issued a grandiose proclamation to the German people, repeating the tiresome lies about the "wild excesses" and "terror" of the Czechs which he had been forced to bring an end to, and proudly proclaiming, "Czechoslovakia has ceased to exist!"

 

That night he slept in Hradschin Castle, the ancient seat of the kings of Bohemia high above the River Moldau where more recently the despised Masaryk and Benes had lived and worked for the first democracy Central Europe had ever known. The Fuehrer's revenge was complete, and that it was sweet he showed in the series of proclamations which he issued. He had paid off all the burning resentments against the Czechs which had obsessed him as an Austrian in his vagabond days in Vienna three decades before and which had flamed anew when Benes dared to oppose him, the all-powerful German dictator, over the past year.

 

The next day,.from Hradschin Castle, he proclaimed the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which though it professed to provide "autonomy and self-government" for the Czechs brought them, by its very language, completely under the German heel. All power was given to the "Reich Protector" and to his Secretary of State and his Head of the Civil Administration, who were to be appointed by the Fuehrer. To placate outraged public opinion in Britain and France, Hitler brought the "moderate" Neurath out of cold storage and named him Protector. [xv] The two top Sudeten leaders, Konrad Henlein and the gangster Karl Hermann Frank, were given an opportunity to get revenge on the Czechs by being appointed Head of the Civil Administration and Secretary of State respectively. It was not long before Himmler, as boss of the German police, got a stranglehold on the protectorate. To do his work, he made the notorious Frank chief of police of the protectorate and ranking S.S. officer. [xvi]

 

[quote]For a thousand years [Hitler said in his proclamation of the protectorate] the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia formed part of the Lebensraum of the German people ... Czechoslovakia showed its inherent inability to survive and has therefore now fallen a victim to actual dissolution. The German Reich cannot tolerate continuous disturbances in these areas ... Therefore the German Reich, in keeping with the law of self-preservation, is now resolved to intervene decisively to rebuild the foundations of a reasonable order in Central Europe. For in the thousand years of its history it has already proved that, thanks to the greatness and the qualities of the German people, it alone is called upon to undertake this task.[/quote]

 

A long night of German savagery now settled over Prague and the Czech lands.

 

On March 16, Hitler took Slovakia too under his benevolent protection in response to a "telegram," actual1y composed in Berlin, as we have seen, from Premier Tiso. German troops quickly entered Slovakia to do the "protecting." On March 18, Hitler was in Vienna to approve the "Treaty of Protection," which, as signed on March 23 in Berlin by Ribbentrop and Dr. Tuka, contained a secret protocol giving Germany exclusive rights to exploit the Slovak economy. [30]

 

As for Ruthenia, which had formed the eastern tip of Czechoslovakia, its independence as the "Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine," proclaimed on March 14, lasted just twenty-four hours. Its appeal to Hitler for "protection" was in vain. Hitler had already awarded this territory to Hungary. In the captured Foreign Office archives there is an interesting letter in the handwriting of Miklos Horthy, Regent of Hungary, addressed to Adolf Hitler on March 13.

 

[quote]YOUR EXCELLENCY: Heartfelt thanks! I cannot express how happy I am, for this headwater region [Ruthenia] is for Hungary -- I dislike using big words  -- a vital question .... We are tackling the matter with enthusiasm. The plans are already laid. On Thursday, the 16th, a frontier incident will take place, to be followed Saturday by the big thrust. [31][/quote]

 

As things turned out, there was no need for an "incident." Hungarian troops simply moved into Ruthenia at 6 A.M. on March 15, timing their entry with that of the Germans to the west, and on the following day the territory was formally annexed by Hungary.

 

Thus by the end of the day of March 15, which had started in Berlin at 1:15 A.M. when Hacha arrived at the Chancellery, Czechoslovakia, as Hitler said, had ceased to exist.

 

Neither Britain nor France made the slightest move to save it, though at Munich they had solemnly guaranteed Czechoslovakia against aggression.

 

Since that meeting not only Hitler but Mussolini had reached the conclusion that the British had become so weak and their Prime Minister, as a consequence, so accommodating that they need pay little further attention to London. On January 11, 1939, Chamberlain, accompanied by Lord Halifax, had journeyed to Rome to seek improvement in Anglo-Italian relations. This writer happened to be at the station in Rome when the two Englishmen arrived and noted in his diary the "fine smirk" on Mussolini's face as he greeted his guests. "When Mussolini passed me," I noted as the party left the station, "he was joking with his son-in-law [Ciano], passing wisecracks." [32] I could not, of course, catch what he was saying, but later Ciano, in his diary, revealed the gist of it.

 

[quote]Arrival of Chamberlain. [Ciano wrote on January 11 and 12] ... How far apart we are from these people! It is another world. We were talking about it after dinner with the Duce. "These men are not made of the same stuff," he was saying, "as the Francis Drakes and the other magnificent adventurers who created the Empire. These, after all, are the tired sons of a long line of rich men, and they will lose their Empire."

 

The British do not want to fight. They try to draw back as slowly as possible, but they do not fight ... Our conversations with the British have ended. Nothing was accomplished. I have telephoned Ribbentrop that the visit was "a big lemonade" [a farce] ....

 

I accompanied the Duce to the station on the departure of Chamberlain [Ciano wrote on January 14].... Chamberlain's eyes filled with tears when the train started moving and his countrymen began singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow." "What is this little song?" the Duce asked. [33][/quote]

 

 

Though during the Sudeten crisis Hitler had been solicitous of Chamberlain's views, there is not a word in the captured German papers to indicate that thereafter he cared a whit what the Prime Minister thought of his destroying the rest of Czechoslovakia despite the British guarantee -- and, for that matter, despite the Munich Agreement. On March 14, as Hitler waited in Berlin to humble Hacha, and as angry questions were raised in the House of Commons in London about Germany's engineering Slovakia's "secession" and about its effect on Britain's guarantee to Prague against aggression, Chamberlain replied heatedly, "No such aggression has taken place."

 

But the next day, March 15, after it had taken place, the Prime Minister used the proclamation of Slovakia's "independence" as an excuse not to honor his country's word. "The effect of this declaration," he explained, "put an end by internal disruption to the State whose frontier we had proposed to guarantee. His Majesty's Government cannot accordingly hold themselves any longer bound by this obligation."

 

Hitler's strategy had thus worked to perfection. He had given Chamberlain his out and the Prime Minister had taken it.

 

It is interesting that the Prime Minister did not even wish to accuse Hitler of breaking his word. "1 have so often heard charges of breach of faith bandied about which did not seem to me to be founded upon sufficient premises," he said, "that 1 do not wish to associate myself today with any charges of that character." He had not one word of reproach for the Fuehrer, not even for his treatment of Hacha and the shabby swindle which obviously -- even if the details were still unknown -- had been perpetrated at the Reich Chancellery on the early morning of this day, March 15.

 

No wonder that the British protest that day, if it could be called that,· was so tepid, and that the Germans treated it -- and subsequent Anglo-French complaints -- with so much arrogance and contempt.

 

[quote]His Majesty's Government have no desire to interfere unnecessarily in a matter with which other Governments may be more directly concerned... . They are, however, as the German Government will surely appreciate, deeply concerned for the success of all efforts to restore confidence and a relaxation of tension in Europe. They would deplore any action in Central Europe which would cause a setback to the growth of this general confidence ... [34][/quote]

 

There was not a word in this note, which was delivered on March 15 by Ambassador Henderson to Ribbentrop as an official message from Lord Halifax, about the specific events of the day.

 

The French were at least specific. Robert Coulondre, the new ambassador of France in Berlin, shared neither his British colleague's illusions about Nazism nor Henderson's disdain of the Czechs. On the morning of the fifteenth he demanded an interview with Ribbentrop, but the vain and vindictive German Foreign Minister was already on his way to Prague, intending to share in Hitler's humiliation of a beaten people. State Secretary von Weizsaecker received Coulondre, instead, at noon. The ambassador lost no time in saying what Chamberlain and Henderson were not yet ready to say: that by its military intervention in Bohemia and Moravia, Germany had violated both the Munich Agreement and the Franco-German declaration of December 6. Baron von Weizsaecker, who later was to insist that he had been stoutly anti-Nazi all along, was in an arrogant mood that would have done credit to Ribbentrop. According to his own memorandum of the meeting,

 

[quote]I spoke rather sharply to the Ambassador and told him not to mention the Munich Agreement, which he alleged had been violated, and not to give us any lectures ... I told him that in view of the agreement reached last night with the Czech government I could see no reason for any demarche by the French ambassador ... and that I was sure he would find fresh instructions when he returned to his Embassy, and these would set his mind at rest. [35][/quote]

 

Three days later, on March 18, when the British and French governments, in deference to outraged public opinion at home, finally got around to making formal protests to the Reich, Weizsaecker fairly outdid his master, Ribbentrop, in his insolence -- again on his own evidence. In a memorandum found in the German Foreign Office files, he tells with evident glee how he refused even to accept the formal French note of protest.

 

[quote]I immediately replaced the Note in its envelope and thrust it back at the Ambassador with the remark that I categorically refused to accept from him any protest regarding the Czecho-Slovak affair. Nor would I take note of the communication, and I would advise M. Coulondre to urge his government to revise the draft ... [36][/quote]

 

Coulondre, unlike Henderson at this period, was not an envoy who could be browbeaten by the Germans. He retorted that his government's note had been written after due consideration and that he had no intention of asking for it to be revised. When the State Secretary continued to refuse to accept the document, the ambassador reminded him of common diplomatic practice and insisted that France had a pedect right to make known its views to the German government. Finally Weizsaecker, according to his own account, left the note lying on his desk, explaining that he "would regard it as transmitted to us through the post." But before he arrived at this impudent gesture, he got the following off his mind:

 

[quote]From the legal point of view there existed a Declaration which had come about between the Fuehrer and the President of the Czecho-Slovak State. The Czech President, at his own request, had come to Berlin and had then immediately declared that he wished to place the fate of his country in the Fuehrer's hands. I could not imagine that the French Government were more Catholic than the Pope and intended meddling in things which had been duly settled between Berlin and Prague. [xvii][/quote]

 

Weizsaecker behaved quite differently to the accommodating British ambassador, who transmitted his government's protest late on the afternoon of March 18. Great Britain now held that it could not "but regard the events of the past few days as a complete repudiation of the Munich Agreement" and that the "German military actions" were "devoid of any basis of legality." Weizsaecker, in recording it, noted that the British note did not go as far in this respect as the French protest, which said that France "would not recognize the legality of the German occupation."

 

Henderson had gone to see Weizsaecker on March 17 to inform him of his recall to London for "consultations" and, according to the State Secretary, had sounded him out "for arguments which he could give Chamberlain for use against the latter's political opposition ... Henderson explained that there was no direct British interest in the Czechoslovak territory. His -- Henderson's -- anxieties were more for the future." [37]

 

Even Hitler's destruction of Czechoslovakia apparently had not awakened the British ambassador to the nature of the government he was accredited to, nor did he seem aware of what was happening that day to the government which he represented.

 

For, suddenly and unexpectedly, Neville Chamberlain, on March 17, two days after Hitler extinguished Czechoslovakia, had experienced a great awakening. It had not come without some prodding. Greatly to his surprise, most of the British press (even the Times, but not the Daily Mail) and the House of Commons had reacted violently to Hitler's latest aggression. More serious, many of his own backers in Parliament and half of the cabinet had revolted against any further appeasement of Hitler. Lord Halifax, especially, as the German ambassador informed Berlin, had insisted that the Prime Minister recognize what had happened and abruptly change his course. [38] It dawned on Chamberlain that his own position as head of government and leader of the Conservative Party was in jeopardy.

 

His radical change of mind came abruptly. As late as the evening of March 16, Sir John Simon, on behalf of the government, had made a speech in the Commons which was so cynical in regard to the Czechs, and so much in the "Munich spirit," that according to press accounts it aroused the House to "a pitch of anger rarely seen." The next day, on the eve of his seventieth birthday, Chamberlain was scheduled to make a speech in his home city of Birmingham. He had drafted an address on domestic matters with special emphasis on the social services. On the afternoon train going up to Birmingham, according to an account given this writer by French diplomatic sources, Chamberlain finally made his decision. He jettisoned his prepared speech and quickly jotted down notes for one of quite a different kind.

 

To all of Britain and indeed to large parts of the world, for the speech was broadcast, Chamberlain apologized for "the very restrained and cautious ... somewhat cool and objective statement" which he had felt obliged to make in the Commons two days before. "I hope to correct that statement tonight," he said.

 

The Prime Minister at last saw that Adolf Hitler had deceived him. He recapitulated the Fuehrer's various assurances that the Sudetenland had been his last territorial demand in Europe and that he "wanted no Czechs." Now Hitler had gone back on them -- "he has taken the law into his own hands."

 

[quote]Now we are told that this seizure of territory has been necessitated by disturbances in Czechoslovakia... . If there were disorders, were they not fomented from without? ... Is this the end of an old adventure or is it the beginning of a new? Is this the last attack upon a small State or is it to be followed by others? Is this, in effect, a step in the direction of an attempt to dominate the world by force? ... While I am not prepared to engage this country by new and unspecified commitments operating under conditions which cannot now be foreseen, yet no greater mistake could be made than to suppose that because it believes war to be a senseless and cruel thing, this nation has so lost its fiber that it will not take part to the utmost of its power in resisting such a challenge if it ever were made.[/quote]

 

This was an abrupt and fateful turning point for Chamberlain and for Britain, and Hitler was so warned the very next day by the astute German ambassador in London. "It would be wrong," Herbert von Dirksen notified the German Foreign Office in a lengthy report on March 18, "to cherish any illusions that a fundamental change has not taken place in Britain's attitude to Germany." [39]

 

It was obvious to anyone who had read Mein Kampf, who glanced at a map and saw the new positions of the German Army in Slovakia, who had wind of certain German diplomatic moves since Munich, or who had pondered the dynamics of Hitler's bloodless conquests of Austria and Czechoslovakia in the past twelve months, just which of the "small states" would be next on the Fuehrer's list. Chamberlain, like almost everyone else, knew perfectly well.

 

On March 31, sixteen days after Hitler entered Prague, the Prime Minister told the House of Commons:

 

[quote]In the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty's Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power. They have given the Polish Government an assurance to this effect. I may add that the French Government have authorized me to make it plain that they stand in the same position in this matter.[/quote]

 

The turn of Poland had come.

 

_______________

 

[b]Notes:[/b]

 

i. The parentheses are in the original.

 

ii. Major Buch's report gives an authentic picture of justice in the Third Reich. "In the following cases of killing Jews," one part reads, "proceedings were suspended or minor punishments were pronounced." He then cites a large number of such "cases," giving the names of the murdered and the murderers. "Party Member Fruehling, August, because of shooting of the Jewish couple Goldberg and because of shooting of the Jew Sinasohn ... Party Members Behring, Willi, and Heike", Josef, because of the shooting of the Jew Rosenbaum and the Jewess Zwienicki ... Party Members Schmidt, Heinrich, and Meckler, Ernst, because of drowning the Jew Ilsoffer ... ," etc.

 

 

iii. When asked during cross-examination by Mr. Justice Jackson at Nuremberg whether he had actually said this, Goering replied, "Yes, this was said in a moment of bad temper and excitement ... It was not meant seriously." [6]

 

iv. The American ambassador in Berlin, Hugh Wilson, was recalled by President  Roosevelt on November 14, two days after Goering's meeting, "for consultations,"  and never returned to his post. The German ambassador in Washington, Hans  Dieckhoff, who on that day reported to Berlin that "a hurricane is raging here" as  the result of the German pogrom, was recalled on November 18 and likewise never  returned. On November 30, Hans Thomsen, the German charge d'affaires in  Washington, advised Berlin by code that "in view of the strained relations and the  lack of security for secret material" in the embassy, the "secret political files" be removed  to Berlin. "The files," he said, "are so bulky that they cannot be destroyed  quickly enough should the necessity arise." [7]

 

v. On January 28, 1939, Lord Halifax secretly warned President Roosevelt that "as  early as November 1938, there were indications which gradually became more  definite that Hitler was planning a further foreign adventure for the spring of 1939."  The British Foreign Secretary said that "reports indicate that Hitler, encouraged  by Ribbentrop, Himmler and others, is considering an attack on the Western  Powers as a preliminary to subsequent action in the East." [8]

 

vi. A German version of Ribbentrop's talk with Ciano in Rome on October 28, drawn up by Dr. Schmidt, confirms Ribbentrop's bellicose attitude and quotes him as saying that Germany and Italy must prepare for "armed conflict with the Western democracies ... here and now." At this meeting Ribbentrop also assured Ciano that Munich had revealed the strength of the isolationists in the U.S.A. "so that there is nothing to fear from America."[10]

 

vii. This fantastic retreat, built at great cost over three years, was difficult to reach. Ten miles of a hairpin road, cut into the mountainside, led up to a long underground passageway, drilled into the rock, from which an elevator carried one 370 feet to the cabin perched at an elevation of over 6,000 feet on the summit of a mountain. It afforded a breath-taking panorama of the Alps. Salzburg could be seen in the distance. Describing it later, Francois-Poncet wondered, "Was this edifice the work of a normal mind or of one tormented by megalomania and haunted by visions of domination and solitude?"

 

viii. On November 24, Hitler issued another secret directive instructing the Wehrmacht  to make preparations for the military occupation of Danzig, but that will be taken  up later. Already the Fuehrer was looking beyond the final conquest of Czechoslovakia.

 

ix. Hitler also demanded that the Czechoslovak National Bank turn over part of its gold reserve to the Reichsbank. The sum requested was 391.2 million Czech crowns in gold. On February 18 Goering wrote the German Foreign Office: "In view of the increasingly difficult currency position, I must insist most strongly that the 30 to 40 million Reichsmarks in gold [from the Czech National Bank] which are involved come into our possession very shortly; they are urgently required for the execution of important orders of the Fuehrer." [16]

 

x. See above, p. 359.

 

xi. Monsignor Tiso, as this writer recalls him, was almost as broad as he was high. He  was an enormous eater. "When I get worked up," he once told Dr. Paul Schmidt,  "I eat half a pound of ham, and that soothes my nerves." He was to die on the  gallows. Arrested by American Army authorities on June 8, 1945, and turned  over to the newly restored Czechoslovakia, he was condemned to death on April  15. 1947, after a trial lasting four months, and was executed on April 18.

 

xii. Italics in the original German minutes.

 

 

xiii. There is a difference of opinion on this point. Some historians have contended that the Germans forced Hacha to come to Berlin. They probably base this contention on a dispatch of the French ambassador in Berlin, who said he had learned this "from a reliable source." But the German Foreign Office documents, subsequently discovered, make it clear that the initiative came from Hacha. He first requested an interview with Hitler on March 13, through the German Legation in Prague, and repeated the request on the morning of the fourteenth. Hitler agreed to it that afternoon. [25]

 

 

xiv. The emphasis is in the German original.

 

xv. On the stand in Nuremberg, Goering admitted that he told Hacha, "I should be  sorry if I had to bomb beautiful Prague." He really didn't intend to carry out the  threat -- "that would not have been necessary," he explained. "But a point like that,  I thought, might serve as an argument and accelerate the whole matter." [27]

 

xvi. On the stand at Nuremberg, Neurath stated that he was taken by "complete surprise"  when Hitler named him Protector, and that he had "misgivings" about taking  the job. However, he says, he took it when Hitler explained that by this appointment  he wanted to assure Britain and France "that he did not wish to carry  on a policy hostile to Czechoslovakia." [29]

 

 

xvii. It might be of interest to skip ahead here and note what happened to some of the characters in the drama just recounted. Frank was sentenced to death by a postwar Czech court and publicly hanged near Prague on May 22, 1946. Henlein committed suicide after his arrest by Czech resistance forces in 1945. Chvalkovsky, who became the representative of the protectorate in Berlin, was killed in an Allied bombing there in 1944. Hacha was arrested by the Czechs on May 14, 1945, but died before he could be tried.

 

 

xviii. On March 16 Chamberlain told the Commons that "so far" no protest had been  lodged with the German government.

 

 xix. Coulondre's version of the interview is given in the French Yellow Book (No. 78,  pp. 102-3, in the French edition). He confirms Weizsaecker's account. Later, at  his trial in Nuremberg, the Stale Secretary argued that in his memoranda of such  meetings he had purposely exaggerated his Nazi sentiments in order to cover his  real anti-Nazi activities. But Coulondre's account of the meeting is only one piece  of evidence that Weizsaecker did not exaggerate at all.

 

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