by Ian Kershaw
The French, too, had been active. The ambassador in Berlin, André François-Poncet, had been instructed at 4a.m. to put proposals similar to Chamberlain’s before Hitler.378 His request early next morning for an audience with Hitler was not welcomed by Ribbentrop, still spoiling for war.379 But after intercession by Göring, prompted by Henderson, Hitler agreed to see the French ambassador at 11.15a.m.380 By then the Reich Chancellery was buzzing with adjutants, ministers, generals, and party bosses, conferring in little groups or scurrying to some hasty discussion with Hitler. To the interpreter Schmidt, the Reich Chancellery resembled an army camp more than a seat of government. Every now and again Hitler would retire with Ribbentrop, Göring, or Keitel to discuss some point or other. But for the most part, he seemed to be passing through the rooms delivering mini Sportpalast harangues to anyone who cared to listen.381 Before François-Poncet arrived, Göring and Neurath had both urged Hitler to settle by negotiation. Göring and Ribbentrop had a fierce row, though not in Hitler’s presence, in which the Foreign Minister was accused of warmongering. He knew what war was, shouted Göring. If the Führer ordered it, he would be in the first aeroplane. But he would insist upon Ribbentrop being in the seat next to him.382
François-Poncet, when eventually his audience was granted, warned Hitler that he would not be able to localize a military conflict with Czechoslovakia, but would set Europe in flames. Since he could attain almost all his demands without war, the risk seemed senseless.383 At that point, around 11.40a.m., the discussion was interrupted by a message that the Italian ambassador Bernardo Attolico wished to see Hitler immediately on a matter of great urgency. Hitler left the room with his interpreter, Schmidt. The tall, stooping, red-faced ambassador lost no time in coming to the point. He breathlessly announced to Hitler that the British government had let Mussolini know that it would welcome his mediation in the Sudeten question. The areas of disagreement were small. The Duce supported Germany, the ambassador went on, but was ‘Of the opinion that the acceptance of the English proposal would be advantageous’ and appealed for a postponement of the planned mobilization.384 After a moment’s pause, Hitler replied: ‘Tell the Duce I accept his proposal.’385 It was shortly before noon. Hitler now had his way of climbing down without losing face.386 ‘We have no jumping-off point for war,’ commented Goebbels. ‘You can’t carry out a world war on account of modalities.’387
When the British Ambassador Henderson entered at 12.15p.m with Chamberlain’s letter, Hitler told him that at the request of his ‘great friend and ally, Signor Mussolini’, he had postponed mobilization for twenty-four hours. The climax of war-fever had passed. During Henderson’s hour-long audience, Attolico interrupted once more to tell Hitler that Mussolini had agreed to the British proposals for a meeting of the four major powers.388 When the dramatic news reached Chamberlain, towards the end of a speech about the crisis he was making to a packed and tense House of Commons, which was expecting an announcement meaning war, the house erupted. ‘We stood on our benches, waved our order papers, shouted until we were hoarse – a scene of indescribable enthusiasm,’ recorded one Member of Parliament. ‘Peace must now be saved.’389
War was averted – at least for the present. ‘The heavens are beginning to lighten somewhat,’ wrote Goebbels. ‘We probably still have the possibility of taking the Sudeten German territory peacefully. The major solution still remains open, and we will further rearm for future eventualities.’390
Already early the next afternoon, Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain, and Édouard Daladier, the small, quiet, dapper premier of France (who looked somewhat ill at ease at the task of dispensing parts of Czechoslovakia, without even a representative of that country present), together with Ribbentrop, Weizsäcker, Ciano, Wilson, and Alexis Léger, State Secretary in the French Foreign Office, took their seats around a table in the newly constructed Führerbau amid the complex of Party buildings centred around the Brown House – the large and imposing Party headquarters – in Munich. There they proceeded to carve up Czechoslovakia.391 Chamberlain, who privately wrote on return to England that the day had been for him a ‘prolonged nightmare’, felt ‘instant relief at Hitler’s ‘moderate and reasonable’ opening remarks.392 The four heads of government began by stating their relative positions on the Sudeten issue. They all – Hitler, too – spoke against a solution by force. The only lack of harmony occurred when the German dictator launched into ferocious attacks on Beneš, which provoked a spirited counter from the otherwise reserved Daladier, and when Chamberlain irritated Hitler by doggedly insisting upon financial compensation to Czechoslovakia for government property which was now to be transferred to Germany. ‘Our time is for me too precious to waste it on such trivialities,’ Hitler exploded. After a short break in mid-afternoon, the discussions focused upon the written proposal to settle the Sudeten question, by now translated into all four languages, that Mussolini had delivered the previous day (though the text had actually been sketched out by Göring, then formalized in the German Foreign Office under Weizsäcker’s eye with some input by Neurath but avoiding any involvement by Ribbentrop, before being handed to the Italian ambassador). It provided the basis for what would become known as the notorious Munich Agreement. The circle of those involved in discussions had now widened to include Göring and the Ambassadors of Italy, France, and Great Britain (Attolico, François-Poncet, and Henderson), as well as legal advisers, secretaries, and adjutants. But it was now mainly a matter of legal technicalities and complex points of detail. The main work was done. That evening, Hitler invited the participants to a festive dinner. Chamberlain and Daladier found their excuses. After the dirty work had been done, they had little taste for celebration.393
The deliberations had lasted in all for some thirteen hours.394 But, sensational though the four-power summit meeting was for the outside world, the real decision had already been taken around midday on 28 September, when Hitler had agreed to Mussolini’s proposal for a negotiated settlement.395 Eventually, around 2.30a.m. on the morning of 30 October, the draft agreement was signed.396 These terms were essentially those of the Godesberg Memorandum, modified by the final Anglo-French proposals, and with dates entered for a progressive German occupation, to be completed within ten days.397 ‘We have then essentially achieved everything that we wanted according to the small plan,’ commented Goebbels. ‘The big plan is for the moment, given the prevailing circumstances, not yet realizable.’398
The following day, Goebbels added: ‘We have all walked on a thin tightrope over a dizzy abyss… The word “peace” is on all lips. The world is filled with a frenzy of joy. Germany’s prestige has grown enormously. Now we are really a world power again. Now, it’s a matter of rearm, rearm, rearm…’399 Hitler and Ribbentrop did not share the general elation. Ribbentrop had pushed for war until the last minute. He felt robbed of his humiliation of the British – all the more so since Chamberlain was feted on his journey through Munich in an open-topped car as the hero of the moment, the actual saviour of Europe’s peace.400 Hitler’s own mood had altered overnight. The impressions he had given of savouring his triumph over the western powers had vanished by the next morning.401 He looked pale, tired, and out of sorts when Chamberlain visited him in his apartment in Prinzregentenplatz to present him with a joint declaration of Germany’s and Britain’s determination never to go to war with one another again. Chamberlain had suggested the private meeting during a lull in proceedings the previous day. Hitler had, the British Prime Minister remarked, ‘jumped at the idea’. Chamberlain regarded the meeting as ‘a very friendly and pleasant talk’. ‘At the end,’ he went on, ‘I pulled out the declaration which I had prepared beforehand and asked if he would sign it.’402 After a moment’s hesitation, Hitler – with some reluctance it seemed to the interpreter Paul Schmidt – appended his signature.403 For him, the document was meaningless. And for him Munich was no great cause for celebration. He felt cheated of the greater triumph which he was certain would have come from the limited war with
the Czechs which had been his aim all summer.404 Even military action for the more restricted goal of attaining the Sudetenland by force had been denied him. He had been compelled, through the readiness of the western powers to make Czechoslovakia concede the Sudetenland, to compromise on the directives that he had upheld since May despite internal opposition. During the Polish crisis the following summer this would make him all the more determined to avoid the possibility of being diverted from war. But when that next crisis came, he was even more confident that he knew his adversaries: ‘Our enemies are small worms,’ he would tell his generals in August 1939. ‘I saw them in Munich.’405
Of those in Hitler’s immediate entourage, none had done more to bring about the eventual acceptance of a negotiated settlement than Göring. He had ultimately scored a victory over his arch-rival, and leading hawk, Ribbentrop. The draft which formed the basis of the Munich Agreement had been largely Göring’s work. His excellent mood at Munich reflected his pleasure that his own approach had ultimately triumphed. But it marked the end of Göring’s influence on foreign policy. It was the first, and last, time that he had pressed for a solution which did not meet with Hitler’s favour. The Führer’s displeasure was apparent to him. His standing with Hitler was diminished. During the following months, he would be totally displaced by Ribbentrop as Hitler’s right hand in all matters related to foreign policy. Weakened and depressed, Göring would take himself on an extended holiday in the Mediterranean in early 1939, leaving the way clear for his arch-rival, and would be largely excluded from decisions on the expansionist programme that culminated in the Polish crisis and war.406
Hitler was scornful, too, of his generals after Munich.407 Their opposition to his plans had infuriated him all summer. How he would have reacted had he been aware that no less a person than his new Chief of Staff, General Haider, had been involved in plans for a coup d’état in the event of war over Czechoslovakia can be left to the imagination.408 Whether the schemes of the ill-coordinated groups involved in the nascent conspiracy would have come to anything is an open question. But with the Munich Agreement, the chance was irredeemably gone. Chamberlain returned home to a hero’s welcome, proclaiming to cheering crowds from the window of the Prime Minister’s residence in 10 Downing Street – choosing words which he associated with Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister under Queen Victoria, following the Berlin Conference six decades earlier – that he had brought ‘peace with honour’ and ‘peace for our time’.409 Distancing itself from the general euphoria, the Manchester Guardian shrewdly noted the external consequences: the Czechs could scarcely see the forcible break-up of their country as ‘peace with honour’; Czechoslovakia was now ‘rendered helpless’; ‘Hitler will be able to advance again, when he chooses, with greatly increased power.’410 The consequences within Germany were also profound. For German opponents of the Nazi regime, who had hoped to use Hitler’s military adventurism as the weapon of his own deposition and destruction, Chamberlain was anything but the hero of the hour. ‘Chamberlain saved Hitler’, was how they bitterly regarded the appeasement diplomacy of the western powers.411
Hitler’s own popularity and prestige reached new heights after Munich. He returned to another triumphant welcome in Berlin. But he was well aware that the elemental tide of euphoria reflected the relief that peace had been preserved. The ‘home-coming’ of the Sudeten Germans was of only secondary importance. He was being feted not as the ‘first soldier of the Reich’, but as the saviour of the peace he had not wanted.412 At the critical hour, the German people, in his eyes, had lacked enthusiasm for war. The spirit of 1914 had been missing. Psychological rearmament had still to take place. A few weeks later, addressing a select audience of several hundred German journalists and editors, he gave a remarkably frank indication of his feelings: ‘Circumstances have compelled me to speak for decades almost solely of peace,’ he declared. ‘It is natural that such a… peace propaganda also has its dubious side. It can only too easily lead to the view establishing itself in the minds of many people that the present regime is identical with the determination and will to preserve peace under all circumstances. That would not only lead to a wrong assessment of the aims of this system, but would also above all lead to the German nation, instead of being forearmed in the face of events, being filled with a spirit which, as defeatism, in the long run would take away and must take away the successes of the present regime.’ It was necessary, therefore, to transform the psychology of the German people, to make it see that some things could only be attained through force, and to represent foreign-policy issues in such a way that ‘the inner voice of the people itself slowly begins to cry out for the use of force’.413
The speech is revealing. Popular backing for war had to be manufactured, since war and expansion were irrevocably bound up with the survival of the regime. Successes, unending triumphs, were indispensable for the regime, and for Hitler’s own popularity and prestige on which, ultimately, the regime depended. Only through expansion – itself impossible without war – could Germany, and the National Socialist regime, survive. This was Hitler’s thinking. The gamble for expansion was inescapable. It was not a matter of personal choice.
The legacy of Munich was fatally to weaken those who might even now have constrained Hitler. Any potential limits – external and internal – on his freedom of action instead disappeared. Hitler’s drive to war was unabated. And next time he was determined he would not be blocked by last-minute diplomatic manoeuvres of the western powers, whose weakness he had seen with his own eyes at Munich.
3
MARKS OF A GENOCIDAL MENTALITY
‘In Germany the Jew cannot hold out. This is a question of years. We will drive them out more and more with an unprecedented ruthlessness.’
Himmler, addressing SS leaders on 8 November 1938
‘If the German Reich comes into foreign-political conflict in the foreseeable future, it can be taken for granted that we in Germany will think in the first instance of bringing about a great showdown with the Jews.’
Göring, at a meeting in the Air Ministry,
12 November 1938
‘The Jews have not brought about the 9 November 1918 for nothing. This day will be avenged.’
Hitler, speaking to the Czechoslovakian Foreign
Minister, Franzisek Chvalkovsky, 21 January 1939
‘I want today to be a prophet again: if international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will be not the bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!’
Hitler, addressing the Reichstag, 30 January 1939
The ideological dynamic of the Nazi regime was a vital component of the drive for expansion. This was by no means solely a matter of Hitler’s personalized Weltanschauung. In fact, Hitler’s ideological aims had so far played only a subordinate role in his expansionist policy, and would not figure prominently in the Polish crisis during the summer of 1939. The Party and its numerous sub-organizations were, of course, important in sustaining the pressure for ever-new discriminatory measures against ideological target-groups. But little in the way of coherent planning could be expected from the central Party office, under the charge of Rudolf Heß, Hitler’s deputy in Party affairs.1 The key agency was not the Party, but the SS.
The interest in expansion was self-evident. Buoyed by their successes in Austria and the Sudetenland, Himmler, Heydrich, and the top echelons of the SS were keen to extend – naturally, under Hitler’s aegis – their own empire. Already in August 1938, a decree by Hitler met Himmler’s wish to develop an armed wing of the SS. It provided in effect a fourth branch of the armed forces – far smaller than the others, but envisaged as a body of ideologically motivated ‘political soldiers’ standing at the Führer’s ‘exclusive disposal’.2 It was little wonder that Himmler had been one of the hawks during the Sudeten crisis, aligning himself with Ribbentrop, and encouragin
g Hitler’s aggression.3 The leaders of the SS were now looking to territorial gains to provide them with opportunities for ideological experimentation on the way to the fulfilment of the vision of a racially purified Greater German Reich under the heel of the chosen caste of the SS élite. In a world after Hitler, with ‘final victory’ achieved, the SS were determined to be the masters of Germany and Europe.
They saw their mission as the ruthless eradication of Germany’s ideological enemies, who, in Himmler’s strange vision, were numerous and menacing. He told top SS leaders in early November 1938: ‘We must be clear that in the next ten years we will certainly encounter unheard of critical conflicts. It is not only the struggle of the nations, which in this case are put forward by the opposing side merely as a front, but it is the ideological (weltanschauliche) struggle of the entire Jewry, freemasonry, Marxism, and churches of the world. These forces – of which I presume the Jews to be the driving spirit, the origin of all the negatives – are clear that if Germany and Italy are not annihilated, they will be annihilated (vernichtet werden). That is a simple conclusion. In Germany the Jew cannot hold out. This is a question of years. We will drive them out more and more with an unprecedented ruthlessness…’4