Hitler (107 page)

He now bent every effort to increase the tensions. At the end of June maneuvers were held near the Czech border, while work on the west wall at the French border was pushed at an accelerated pace. With Henlein carrying out instructions to seek confrontation, Hitler cautiously stirred the greed of Czechoslovakia's other neighbors, especially the Hungarians and the Poles. The Western powers pressed the Prague government for more and more concessions. As if the one gesture of resolution had consumed all their strength, they returned to their former compliance, and the policy of appeasement now moved toward its climax. Honorable or understandable though their motives might be, that policy suffered equally from ignorance of Hitler and ignorance of the special problems of Central Europe. The appeasers had a deep distaste for the complex animosities in Central Europe, and they capitulated before the impossibility of threading their way through the labyrinth of ethnic, religious, national, racial, cultural, and historical grievances. For Nevile Henderson the Czechs were “the damned Czechs.” Lord Rothermere stated in the
Daily Mail
that the Czechs were of no concern to Englishmen. Chamberlain summed up the fundamental mood when he spoke of “a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing!” The mission of inquiry in Czechoslovakia on which the British government had dispatched Lord Runciman in August was an admission of indifference.
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It is against this background that we must see the fateful editorial in the London
Times
of September 7, which proposed ceding the Sudetenland to the Reich. For after many weeks in which the crisis continued to worsen of its own accord, while Hitler seemingly restrained himself, the whole world was awaiting the speech with which he would wind up the Nuremberg party rally on September 12. It is quite possible that the many evidences of the spirit of appeasement contributed to the exceptionally violent and challenging tenor of that speech. But the unforgotten humiliation of May, to which he repeatedly reverted at length, was also a factor. He spoke of “infamous deception,” of “terroristic blackmail” and the “criminal aims” of the Prague government. He once more worked himself up over the imputation that he had retreated in the face of his opponents' resolute posture, and he denounced their preparations for war. He had now drawn the necessary conclusions, he continued, which would permit him to strike back at once in the future. “In no circumstances shall I be willing any longer to regard with endless tranquillity a continuation of the oppression of German compatriots in Czechoslovakia.... The Germans of Czechoslovakia are neither defenseless nor deserted. Let this be noted.”

The speech was the signal for an uprising in the Sudetenland that cost many lives. In Germany a period of hectic military activity began. Blackout drills were held and automobiles requisitioned. For a moment war seemed inevitable. Then events took a surprising turn. Prime Minister Chamberlain, in a message dispatched on the night of September 13, declared his willingness to come to any desired place, without consideration of questions of prestige, for a personal discussion with Hitler. “I propose to come across by air and am ready to start tomorrow,” Chamberlain wrote.

Hitler felt exceedingly flattered, although the proposal involved slowing down on the collision course on which he had been hurtling. “I was thunderstruck,” he later declared. But the insecurity that all his life had made him incapable of gestures of magnanimity continued to govern his behavior. His guest was almost seventy and about to enter a plane for the first time in his life. But Hitler was incapable of meeting Chamberlain halfway. He proposed Berchtesgaden as the place for the conference. When the British Prime Minister arrived at the Berghof on the afternoon of September 15, after having traveled for nearly seven hours, Hitler went no farther to meet him than the top step of the large outside staircase. Once again he had placed General Keitel intimidatingly among the members of his entourage. When Chamberlain expressed the desire for a private conversation, Hitler agreed, but with the probable intention of further tiring the old man poured out upon him a rambling review of the European situation, Anglo-German relations, his own degree of resolution, and his successes. Despite his stoic equanimity, Chamberlain undoubtedly saw through Hitler's tricks and maneuvers, and in his report to the cabinet two days later he referred to him as “the commonest little dog” he had ever seen.
⁸⁴

When Hitler at last came round to talking about the current crisis, he demanded nothing less than the annexation of the Sudeten territory. Chamberlain interrupted to ask whether he would be content with that or whether he wanted to dismember Czechoslovakia entirely. Hitler replied by referring to Polish and Hungarian demands. But all that did not interest him, Hitler declared, nor was the present the time to discuss the technical arrangements: “Three hundred Sudeten Germans have been killed, and that cannot go on, that has to be settled at once. I am determined to settle it; I don't care whether or not there is a world war.”

Chamberlain responded testily that he did not see why it had been necessary for him to take so long a journey if Hitler had nothing to say to him except that he had decided on force anyhow. Hitler then became somewhat more conciliatory. He would “today or tomorrow look into the question of whether a peaceful solution of the question was still possible.” The decisive factor, he continued, would be “whether England is now ready to consent to a detachment of the Sudeten German region on the basis of the right of peoples to self-determination; with regard to which he [the Führer] must remark that this right of self-determination had not recently been invented by him in 1938 especially for the Czechoslovakian question, but had been created in 1918 in order to establish a moral basis for the changes resulting from the Versailles Treaty.” They agreed that Chamberlain would fly back to England for a cabinet session to discuss this question; in the meantime, Hitler promised, he would take no military measures.

As soon as Chamberlain had departed, Hitler propelled the crisis and his own preparations further. The obliging attitude of the British Prime Minister had thrown him into consternation, for it threatened to frustrate his further plans for annexing the whole of Czechia. But in the hope that Chamberlain would be overruled by his own cabinet, by the French, or by the Czechs, Hitler continued his arrangements. While the German press unleashed a savage campaign of atrocity stories, he set up a Sudeten German Free Corps “for the protection of the Sudeten Germans and the continuance of disturbances and clashes.” It was placed under the leadership of Konrad Henlein, who had fled to Germany. Hitler also urged Hungary and Poland to make territorial demands upon Prague, while also encouraging the Slovaks in their efforts to secure autonomy. Finally, in order to stir clashes on a larger scale, he had members of the Sudeten German Free Corps occupy the cities of Eger and Asch.

He was consequently stunned when Chamberlain, at their second meeting in the Hotel Dreesen in Godesberg on September 22, brought word that England, France, and even Czechoslovakia acquiesced to the cession of the Sudeten territory. Moreover, in order to remove Germany's fears that Czechoslovakia might be used as the “tip of a lance” against the flank of the Reich, the British Prime Minister proposed that the existing treaties of alliance between France, the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia be dissolved. Instead, an international guarantee would assure the country's independence. All this was so astonishing that Hitler asked once more whether this offer had the approval of the Prague government. Chamberlain replied that it had. There was a brief, embarrassed pause before Hitler answered quietly: “I am very sorry, Mr. Chamberlain, that I can now no longer enter into these matters. After the developments of the past few days this solution will no longer do.”

Chamberlain showed his vexation. He asked angrily what circumstances had meanwhile changed the situation. Hitler once more evaded an answer by referring to the demands of the Hungarians and the Poles, then indulged in denunciations of the Czechs, lamented the sufferings of the Sudeten Germans, until at last he found the saving obstacle and immediately seized upon it: “It is vital to act quickly. The decision must be made in a few days.... The problem must be settled once and for all by October 1, completely settled.”

After three hours of fruitless bargaining, Chamberlain returned to the Hotel Petersberg across the Rhine. When an exchange of letters likewise proved fruitless, he asked for a written memorandum on the German demands, and announced that he was leaving. Hitler, State Secretary von Weizsäcker has related, “clapped his hands as if he had witnessed a successful entertainment” when these events were described to him. The news of the Czechoslovak mobilization, which exploded right in the middle of the chaotic, highly emotional concluding conversations, intensified the sense of approaching disaster. Nevertheless, Hitler now seemed ready to make a few trivial concessions, while Chamberlain showed signs of giving up and made it plain that he would no longer permit himself to be used by Hitler as a mediator.

The British cabinet met on Sunday, September 25, to discuss Hitler's memorandum. It flatly rejected the new demands and promised the French government British support in case of a military involvement with Germany. Prague, too, which had accepted the Berchtesgaden conditions only under the utmost pressure, now regained its freedom of action and rejected Hitler's proposals. Preparations for war began in England and France.

In the face of this unexpected intransigence by the opposing side, Hitler once more adopted the role of a man enraged beyond all bearing. “There's no point at all in going on with negotiations,” he shouted at Sir Horace Wilson on September 26. “The Germans are being treated like niggers; nobody dares to treat even Turkey this way. On October 1 I'll have Czechoslovakia where I want her.”
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Then he set a deadline for Wilson: he would hold back his divisions only if the Godesberg memorandum were accepted by the Prague government by 2
P.M.
on September 28. In the past several days he had vacillated constantly between a safe partial success and a risky total triumph that far better suited his radical temperament. He would sooner conquer Prague than receive Karlsbad and Eger as a gift. The tensions racking him during these days were discharged in the famous speech in the Berlin Sportpalast, by which he once again aggravated the crisis, while at the same time contrasting it with the tempting idyl of a continent at last entering a period of tranquillity:

 

And now before us stands the last problem that must be solved and will be solved. It is the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe, but it is the claim from which I will not recede and which, God willing, I will make good.

 

Scornfully, he pointed out the contradictions between the principle of self-determination and the reality of the multinational State of Czechoslovakia. In describing the course of the crisis he again put himself into the dramatic role of the offended party, cried out against the terror in the Sudetenland, and in giving refugee figures allowed himself to be carried far beyond facts:

 

We see the appalling figures: on one day 10,000 fugitives, on the next 20,000, a day later, already 37,000, again two days later 41,000, then 62,000, then 78,000: now 90,000, 107,000, 137,000, and today 214,000. Whole stretches of country have been depopulated, villages are burned down, attempts are made to smoke out the Germans with hand grenades and gas. Mr. Benes, however, sits in Prague and is convinced: “Nothing can happen to me: in the end England and France stand behind me.”

And now, my fellow-countrymen, I believe that the time has come when one must mince matters no longer.... He will have to hand this territory over to us on October 1.... The decision now lies in his hands: Peace or War!

 

Once again he gave assurances that he was not interested in wiping out or annexing Czechoslovakia: “We want no Czechs!” he shouted, and as he came to his peroration worked himself up into a state of ecstasy. Eyes raised to the roof of the hall, fired by the greatness of the hour, the cheering of the masses, and his own paroxysm, he ended on a rapturous note:

 

Now I go before my people as its first soldier and behind me—let the world know this—there marches a people, and a different people from that of 1918.... It will feel my will to be its will. Just as in my eyes it is its future and its fate which gave me the commission for my action. And we wish now to make our will as strong as it was in the time of our struggle, the time when I, as a simple unknown soldier, went forth to conquer a Reich.... And so I ask you, my German people, take your stand behind me, man by man, and woman by woman.... We are determined!

Now let Mr. Benes make his choice!

 

Storms of applause followed, and while Hitler, bathed in sweat, glassyeyed, sat down, Goebbels sprang up. “One thing is sure: 1918 will never be repeated!” he shouted. William Shirer observed from the balcony the way Hitler looked up at Goebbels “as if those were the words which he had been searching for all evening and hadn't quite found. He leaped to his feet and with a fanatical fire in his eyes that I shall never forget brought his right hand, after a grand sweep, pounding down on the table, and yelled with all the power of his mighty lungs:
la!'
Then he slumped into his chair exhausted.”
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That evening Goebbels coined the slogan:
Führer befiehl, wir folgen
! (“Führer command, we obey!”) The masses went on chanting it long after the end of the meeting. As Hitler departed, they began to sing
Der Gott, der Eisen wachsen Hess,
a combat song repudiating subjection.

Still inspired by the heat and the hysteria of the previous night, Hitler once again received Sir Horace Wilson next day at noon. If his demands were rejected he would destroy Czechoslovakia, he threatened; and when Wilson replied that England would intervene militarily if France found herself compelled to hasten to the aid of Czechoslovakia, Hitler declared he could merely note the fact: “If France and England strike, let them do so. It is a matter of complete indifference to me. I am prepared for every eventuality. It is Tuesday today, and by next Monday we shall all be at war/'
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That same day he ordered additional mobilization measures.