1938 (36 page)

Göring and Neurath were also working on Hitler, while the finance minister Schwerin von Krosigk submitted his views in writing. Hitler dismissed Göring’s qualms, calling him an old woman. Schwerin von Krosigk’s line echoed that of Schacht: Germany did not have enough money to go to war. The country was already “done for.” Next Henderson arrived, bringing Chamberlain’s reply to his letter. The prime minister wanted an international conference. Hitler said he would talk it over with Mussolini. Attolico had a message from the Duce that he supported Chamberlain’s plan. In his “dazzling hatred” for Britain, Ribbentrop was alone in egging Hitler on. Göring took the RAM to one side and angrily berated him as a “criminal fool.” Göring said he knew the meaning of war and that it was not to be undertaken lightly. If it were to break out, Ribbentrop should sit beside him in the first bomber. There was never any love lost between the two. It was a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, only to be compared to that which followed the abortive July 20th plot in 1944.

Hitler, who had been wandering around the Chancellery ranting, agreed to Chamberlain’s suggestion shortly before noon. The Italian leader had managed to use his powers of persuasion to sugar the pill. It temporarily dampened Hitler’s ambitions. “We’ll carry on fortifying ourselves for a future opportunity,” wrote Goebbels. Hitler decided that the conference should take place in Munich. Only the French and the British would be invited; the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia would learn of the decisions later. Neither were great powers in Hitler’s eyes. The information was carried back to London, where Chamberlain was addressing a House of Commons expecting to hear a declaration of war. The news was greeted with “indescribable enthusiasm.”

The opposition was still hoping to strike on the 29th and eagerly awaited confirmation that their coup could move forward. On the morning of the 28th Kordt gave Oster the text of Chamberlain’s letter to Hitler. It was circulated to Witzleben and Halder. They interpreted it to mean that Hitler was bent on war. Halder went to Brauchitsch, who was finally convinced to act. Kordt wanted it to happen at once, not waiting even one day. It was then that the opposition learned of the Italian demarche, which would preserve Hitler at the expense of Czechoslovakia. “Colombo” (so-called because he had been German consul in Ceylon) Brücklmeier, who was on duty in the Chancellery, took the news to Kordt. Hitler postponed mobilization for twenty-four hours.

On September 28 European war still seemed unavoidable. Hitler met Mussolini off his train on the platform at Kufstein on the old Austrian border, and they traveled together to Munich. Hitler thought he was briefing the Italian leader, but Mussolini was keener to calm Hitler down and prevent him from dragging Europe into war, all the time reassuring him that if the conference did break down, Italy would be behind him. Mussolini was of two minds. Half of him thought there was a chance of eliminating France and Britain forever. On the way to Munich, Hitler told him of his longterm plans: he needed to knock out Czechoslovakia to leave his hands free to fight Britain and France. They needed to go to war soon, while they were “young and full of vigour.” Mussolini was to be the focus of the conference, largely because, unlike Hitler, he could speak the languages of the other attendees. Ciano accompanied his father-in-law.

Chamberlain was met by Ribbentrop and Bavarian State Councillor Christian Weber at the airport in Oberwiesenfeld. The RAM was still shouting for war, behaving “like a petulant child” and deliberately trying to wreck the conference. He was particularly furious at the presence of his predecessor, Neurath. Chamberlain was lodged in the Hotel Regina on the Maximiliansplatz in Munich, together with the Czech “observers” Mastny and Masaryk, who were present to receive whatever scraps were handed down from the top table. The French delegation stopped at the Vier Jahreszeiten. Outside, in the streets of Munich, people were on tenterhooks, hoping that peace would be preserved. Even Winifred Wagner thought that was what her “Wolf ” really wanted.

The talks began at 12:30 PM in Hitler’s study in the Führerbau. The seating had been managed so that Hitler had his back to the window and his face in shadow. Chamberlain was on his left. Daladier and Mussolini sat together on a sofa. The basis for the Munich Agreement was the document drawn up by Neurath and Weizsäcker, together with Göring, which stemmed from the British note. It had then been given to Attolico to send to Rome. Mussolini had passed it off as his, to mislead Ribbentrop.

There was little opposition to Hitler’s diktat. A General Staff map was brought in, and the conference effectively took the form of a border commission. The international treaties that guaranteed the Czech state were torn up. There was occasional rearguard action from Daladier, on the advice of Alexis Léger, the head of the Quai d’Orsay, who expressed concern for the future existence of Czechoslovakia. Hitler seemed to take this well and later expressed his liking of the French premier, who impressed the Germans much more than the frigid, vulpine Chamberlain. The draft was signed at around 2:30 AM on the morning of September 30. The Poles and Hungarians had to lodge their claims to territory within three months. Hitler could still march in on the first of the month; he appeared so pleased with the result that he ordered the guest book to be brought over from the Brown House so that the leaders could enter their signatures.

The agreement gave Hitler pretty well everything he had craved at Bad Godesberg, and the German armies went in on October 1 as planned. The new borders were drawn on strategic rather than ethnic lines, thereby leaving a quarter of a million Germans in Czechoslovakia and bringing 800,000 Czechs into the Reich. The Czech version of the Maginot Line was absorbed into German territory. Czechs who did not wish to remain in the new German Zone (these included ethnic Germans for whom Nazi rule would have been unpalatable, and some 30,000 Jews) were to leave before October 10, with only the clothes they were wearing; everything else was to be left behind. The Germans would pay no compensation. Chamberlain’s attempts to win some sort of deal for the Czechs had caused the only disagreement between him and Hitler at the conference. In the end he had not even been able to save a few head of Czech cattle.

On November 20, an “international commission” allotted 11,000 square miles to the Germans. These contained 66 percent of Czech coal, 80 percent of lignite, 70 percent of iron and steel, and the same amount of the nation’s electric power, as well as 40 percent of its timber. Göring rubbed his thighs in glee, and a humiliated Beneš went into bitter exile. On October 10 the Czechs conceded that the Teschen pocket belonged to the Poles, and on November 2 Ribbentrop and Ciano redrew the Czech-Hungarian border. Czechoslovakia was now defenseless against Germany’s next blow, which would not be long in coming.

Hitler could be said to have won the day hands down, but he was still cross. He cared little for the Sudeteners—he wanted Prague. He was especially angry when Chamberlain was cheered by the Munich crowd as he traveled in an open-topped car after his visit to his “modest apartment” on the Prinzregentenplatz. Without informing Daladier, Chamberlain had gone to seek further assurance of Hitler’s peaceable intentions. The Anglo-German agreement was to create machinery for constant maintenance of peaceful relations. Hitler seemed sullen and distracted. Schmidt (who was present once again) believed he appended his signature to Chamberlain’s document only to placate the Englishman. That night the Munichois celebrated with double measures of beer. Even
Der Stürmer
congratulated Chamberlain on standing up to the (Jewish) mob and working for peace. Hitler did not join them; he thought the British prime minister had spoiled his triumphal entry into Prague.

Chamberlain must have felt relieved, but he went home and told the relevant bodies to rearm, quickly. He had bought some time, and he was right about one thing: Hitler wanted war, and that had only been delayed. There had never been any intention of going to Czechoslovakia’s aid anyhow. On March 18, shortly after the Anschluss, Vansittart’s successor at the Foreign Office, Sir Alexander Cadogan, had written in his diary, “Foreign Policy Committee unanimous that Czechoslovakia is not worth the bones of a single Grenadier. And they’re quite right too!”

Among the leading Nazis, Göring was also in the doghouse for spoiling Hitler’s fun. Ribbentrop now moved into the ascendant, and the corpulent former air ace would never have Hitler’s ear again when it came to foreign policy. Hitler may have been obliged to shelve his plans to absorb Bohemia and Moravia, but only until the next opportunity arose.

In Berlin, Klepper’s mind was put at rest that war had been avoided. There was, however, no mention of the fate of the Czechs. He noted that the feeling of happiness was universal; even voices on the telephone sounded different. Everyone was “exhausted and happy”; Hitler’s “magic was shattered.” In the church in Berlin-Mariendorf that Sunday, people cried as they sang the “Leuthen Chorale”—
Nun danket alle Gott!

Goebbels retired to bed “as happy as a child.” Germany’s prestige “had grown monstrously, now we are really a world power and that means arm! Arm! Arm!” The “old woman” Göring was naturally as pleased as punch at his success. He had got the resources he wanted, and he had managed to avert a conflict. “He fought bravely for the sake of peace.” He woke Emmy at the conclusion of the conference and told her “We’ve pulled it off”; “It’s peace.” He was over the moon at all that he had acquired for his Four Year Plan. Taking Ciano to the station the next morning, he told the Italian, “Now, there’s going to be rearmament the likes of which the world has never seen.”

Far away in China, the German Rhodes scholar, Adam von Trott zu Solz, who was later to perish for his part in the July 20th plot, wrote to his friend Shiela Grant Duff on October 1. He felt the one advantage of what had taken place was that it had been a European decision and not merely a Germano-Czech one, “but I agree with you in your present apprehensions.”

He wrote again on the 6th.

I confess that I failed to realise the intrinsic turning point which came about with the Anschluss and which opened up a path for a coercive settlement of the Central European problem—which I had never considered possible with the power, prestige and commitments of the Western Democracies in that area. Though I did realise there was in England a large body of opinion that favoured a negotiated settlement of the Sudeten question in Germany’s favour, I believed that France and Russia would remain intransigent on the matter and that your country would back [them] up.

The opposition would have to shelve their plans too. There was a furious reaction against Canaris and Kleist-Schmenzin and all those who had implied that Britain would fight. For generals like Gerd von Rundstedt, who had been initiated into the plot by his friend Kleist, the whole thing now felt like a hoax. “Brauchitsch would hear no more talk of a revolt, the servile Keitel had been kept out of the picture from the start; Halder who had been found slumped at his desk by Hitler’s adjutant, Gerhard Engel, had despondently told General von Witzleben, the most eager of the rebels, that he could not be answerable for military action against Hitler if Mr Chamberlain found a peaceable solution to the Czechoslovak dispute. Kleist went back to his estates in Pomerania, utterly disillusioned.” There was not to be another coordinated attempt to remove the Führer until July 20, 1944.

On September 7, Italy closed another door: Jews were now to be defined racially and not religiously. Up until then, Italy had still been on the escape route for many baptized Jews. Foreign Jews who had settled in Italy after 1919 would now be expelled. The measure affected as many as 40,000 people, including an estimated 6,000 Austrian and German Jews. There were around 70,000 Jews living in Italy, defined as full Jews with two Jewish parents. From September 3 they were evicted from Italian schools and universities. In Rome, Pius XI quietly made his views clear to a group of Belgian pilgrims on the 6th, after delivering a reading about Abraham “our father, our ancestor.” He said, “Antisemitism is not compatible with the sublime thought and reality which are expressed in this text. It is not possible for Christians to participate in antisemitism. Spiritually, we are Semites.”